


Cool Ur Beans My Son (Your Changed To Ur, Due To Popular Demand)

by Rogha



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M, High School, Non-Linear Narrative, Supernatural Elements, Trans Male Character, also not high school, resbang, time is all over the place in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22095214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rogha/pseuds/Rogha
Summary: "SAVE RAG" is not something Soul Evans expects to see written on his bathroom wall in blood, but there's not really a rulebook for having a joint-custody agreement over your own body. He figured that losing every 3rd Saturday of his month was a pretty good deal, until now.But now he has to deal with this, mostly because he can't afford to keep cleaning his bathroom. But saving this Rag guy, whoever he is, is going to be far more problematic than originally thought - especially considering Soul has to interact with some people from his past that he really hopes have forgiven him.
Relationships: Maka Albarn/Hiro (past), Maka Albarn/Soul Eater Evans
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Cool Ur Beans My Son (Your Changed To Ur, Due To Popular Demand)

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a year, lads.
> 
> Thanks as always to the mods for running a wonderful event.
> 
> I cannot thank my artist partners - Nyxique and Sojustifiable - enough for all the support and encouragement, especially in the few hours. Their art is stunning and so much more than I could ever have hoped for.
> 
> You can listen: https://sojustifiable.tumblr.com/post/190030365294/nothing-has-to-stay
> 
> And you can look: https://nyxique.tumblr.com/post/190030331322/ive-finally-finished-my-second-resbang-project
> 
> And if I can figure out foe to imbed things later today you can maybe do those things while reading.
> 
> And special thanks to Pere, for making sure I wasn't the worst kind of cis.

* * *

The third Sunday of the month started the same way.

It started the way a lot of days did, really. In the morning, with Soul in his bed.

The ways in which it was different – the pounding headache, the tired ache of muscles pushed too hard by someone who didn’t have a full understanding of the limitations of the human body, the generally feeling of being wrung out and stretched thin, like blu-tack just before it breaks.

Soul wanted to stay in bed all day.

Instead, he got up. His whole body felt heavy, and it was exhausting to try to move his limbs in all the ways they needed to, to get from here to the bathroom. The aspirin lived in there. He always meant to leave it on his bedside table, but the third Saturday of the month snuck up on him before he realised that it was the third Friday of the month.

He’d always been bad at keeping track of things like that. At least he didn’t get a period anymore – it had always snuck up on him. One day a month? He’d take it.

Soul fished aspirin out of the bottle, groping around in the dark, before slamming it back into the cabinet. He stuck his head under the faucet and made a mess of trying to get enough water to swallow the tablets. There was writing on the mirror – there was always writing on the mirror on the third Sunday of the month. He could smell it as soon as he walked it. Soul didn’t bother switching on the light to read it, choosing instead to lie on the nice cool tile floor until the aspirin kicked in. He wadded a towel under his head.

Did he fall asleep?

Maybe.

That’s between him and god.

Eventually, it didn’t feel like every cell was rioting against him for having the audacity to be alive, and that meant it was time to check the mirror. The writing. See if there was anything important. There wasn’t always, and Soul had given up trying to get Oni to stop writing on the mirror in blood.

Oni had purchased a bigger mirror in protest when Soul had suggested it.

Oni’s blood was different to Soul’s, a thick black sludge that dried to a powdery charcoal consistency that Soul hated cleaning off the mirror. Soul would also admit that he didn’t think cleaning regular blood off a mirror would be all that fun either. Aspirin or no, it was still hard to haul himself upright, leaning on the sink a little bit too heavily. He froze when it jarred under his weight.

Soul yanked on the pull cord for the light, flinching when it flickered to light. It was too early for fluorescent lighting. He looked in the general direction of the mirror, and waited for his eyes to adjust.

Soul’s bathroom mirror was the kind of mirror you hung over a fireplace, or in a fancy entrance hall. It was huge, didn’t go with anything in the rest of the bathroom and Oni could fit a lot of writing on it. It did not, in any way shape or form, fit over the sink. There was a second full length mirror on the back of the door.

Just in case the giant over the sink mirror didn’t have enough room.

For everything Oni could possibly want to say.

In blood.

It didn’t.

There was writing everywhere. Cramped and scrawled, smudged in Oni’s hurry to get it all down. It meandered off the mirrors and over the walls, down onto the tiles and looping into the bath. It was a tangled mess of letters. It criss-crossed and over lapped like the world’s worst summoning circle. It was on the ceiling. It was on the floor, and it had transferred onto Soul’s skin while he was sleeping… uh, resting his eyes. On the floor.

Gross.

And he couldn’t even wash it off until he figured out what Oni was trying to say.

Because Oni had written in the fucking shower.

Soul turned around and left the bathroom, leaving the light on.

Soul needed coffee.

He needed a pen and paper.

He needed some string, probably.

Whatever was happening, whatever made Oni this worried and afraid and panicked, Soul suspected he might also need some help, but he didn’t feel ready to listen to the rational part of his brain just yet.

* * *

_ It was a long summer after that.  _

_ Long and hot and dry and lonely.  _

_ Soul wandered the city, exploring the parts he’d never really been to before, the places he knew he was unlikely to run into anyone who recognised him. He and Oni watched as the estate house was flattened to make room for a strip mall.  _

_ And then he left for college, and if he was lucky, all the unpleasantness, and all the loneliness was behind him.  _

_ If he was lucky. _

* * *

It had been hours. 

Soul had been in the bathroom for hours, but the looping, twisting words weren’t getting any less tangled and complicated, and his headache was pounding at his temples. He couldn’t even take more aspirin, because he’d exceeded the daily recommended dose already.

Soul was a rebel, but he still mostly followed the rules.

He’d tried, if not everything, most things he could think of. This was bullshit. Oni knew Soul was dyslexic. Frankly, Soul has always thought the mirror thing was ridiculous but Oni had a reputation to protect. You couldn’t go around possessing people and not leaving messages in blood.

It just wasn’t done.

All he had were a handful of letters that he couldn’t even be sure were in anything remotely resembling the right order. He looked down at his notes, scrawled and rewritten and more than a little guesswork. 

SAVE RAG

Who even was Rag? Soul didn’t know anyone by that name - it had to be someone Oni knew. But who did Oni know? Oni tried not to have friends Soul didn’t know about - incase he ran into them. THe rest of it had to mean something- clues about who Rag was, where he was - But Soul was just one man.

And, he’d admit it, sometimes he got winded if he had to take the stairs at a run, instead of his usual leisurely place.

Soul didn’t want to contact them – it had been a long time, but not long enough at the same time. They hadn’t exactly left things on the best of terms. But there wasn’t anyone else he could ask.

No one else tackled the strange things that happened in Death City, and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Oni in the first place. He needed, at the very least, someone without dyslexia to look at the writing. It was giving him a headache trying to untangle what was a mess of letters before his dyslexia had ever even goten at it.

But he didn’t even know how… how to begin to ask for their help. He didn’t think they would say no - there was no way they would say no, right? They wouldn’t risk it, even if they didn’t think it was going to amount to anything.

But on the other hand, what if they thought he was faking it, just to…

Just to get back in contact.

There’s no way. 

They would come, if he asked.

Whoever this Rag was, and whoever he needed saving from, it had better be something big, because Soul was not sacrificing the shreds of his dignity to call up some friends who owed him less than jack shit to come decipher this code. But Oni never asked too much of Soul, and Soul would guess pulled some strings to afford Soul and therefore himself a more comfortable lifestyle.

But he had asked Soul do do this, and it must’ve been important for him to do so. 

So if Oni could ask this, Soul could suck it up and ring Death City’s premiere ‘Unusual Phenomena Investigative Agency’ and ask for help. Maybe he could give a fake name, and they would think that he was some else. It had been ten years. They probably didn’t know what his voice sounded like anymore. 

He moved out to his bedroom, sitting heavily on his bed. He reached for his address book - he wasn’t sure what was in there, but Soul had a habit of wedging business cards into the pocket at the front in case he ever needed one of the services he saw advertised at the library counter. He flipped open his phone - punching in the area code to save some time and - right there. 

At the top of the suggestions.

The ones that appeared in alphabetical order.

AAAUnusual Phenomena IA.

Maybe Oni had already tried calling, before resorting to Soul. 

It was like Oni to contact people Soul knew, if he could help it.

Rag, whoever he was, must be in real trouble.

Soul squinted at the number, trying to decipher the shape of it, moving his thumb in a familiar pattern in time with the numbers. That was Kid’s house phone number. Kid’s dad had passed away a couple of years ago, Soul knew that - his parents went to the funeral.

Soul had been in college, doing a midterm, and he didn’t think he would’ve been able to think of a good enough reason not to go, otherwise.

Soul hit call. 

It rang.

It rang again. 

It rang a third time.

Liz answered.

“Hi! This is the Unusual Phenomena Investigative Agency please leave a message after the beep.“

Soul, you dumbass, it’s fucking Sunday.

Rag would survive until Monday, right?

He’d better leave a message, since he was this far.

“Hi, you might not remember - “ He would be so lucky if they did not remember “ - but we were in high school togeth - “

“Soul!?” 

That wasn’t Liz.

_ Oh shit. This was way worse than the answering machine. _

Not Liz.

Not an answering machine.

This was so much worse than Liz or an answering machine.

Maka.

It was Maka.

Soul could admit he’d been hoping that if he left a message they would decide not to ever call him back and he would’ve done his due dilligence and in three weeks Oni would murder him for failing to do the one thing he’d asked of him in since they’d met.

“Why are you? I shouldn’t have picked up - you shouldn’t have called.”

Maka was right. He shouldn’t have called.

But he’d called anyway. 

“No!  _ Nononononodon’thangup _ ,” Soul yelped down the phone. “Don’t hang up!”

“Why would I hang up? Should I hang up?”

“No, really don’t hang up - this isn’t.. It’s not - “ Soul stammered.

“Isn’t what?”

“I uh, I think I need your help,” Soul said, glancing at the bathroom door. He swallowed. “Please.”

“Where are you?” Maka said, her voice softening. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

* * *

_ “Why weren’t you there, Soul?” Maka asked. “We could’ve really used you. You’re never around anymore.” _

_ Soul didn’t have a good answer for that anymore. He hadn’t wanted to get hurt again, couldn’t bear to watch Maka falling in love with someone else, wasn’t strong enough to be of any real use… _

_ They were good reasons once. _

_ Soul didn’t say anything. _

_ “It’s not fair, Soul,” Maka said. “You… can’t do this.” _

_ “I don’t – you’re upset – “ _

_ “You can’t try come back into my life just because Hiro died!” Maka was sobbing now, loud and ugly. They were far enough away from the party that no one should’ve heard but her voice carried. “It’s not fair!” _

_ “That’s not what I’m – “ _

_ “Isn’t it though?” _

_ “We all know you stopped hanging out with us because Maka liked Hiro, not you.” _

_ “That’s not why –“ _

_ Wasn’t it though? Wasn’t that why? _

_ “Just… leave me alone, Soul.” _

_ The drop was high, too high for a normal, ordinary human to drop without hurting themselves. _

_ Soul dropped off the wall anyway. _

* * *

Maka hadn’t said what time they would be here at, but Soul wanted to seem like his life was at least sort of together when they did get here, so he’d gotten dressed, made his bed, moved a lot of clothes from the floor to the laundry basket, thought about taking out the trash but it didn’t really need to just yet. 

It could go out, wouldn’t be a waste of his time to take it out, but it didn’t  _ need  _ to go out. 

He might as well take it down to the trash chute. 

He took it down to the trash chute.

Then he pretended he was seeing his apartment for the first time when he walked through the door, and rearranged his couch cushions and then rearranged them again. Then he squinted at them a little and realised that his cushions had never really went with the rest of his living space to begin with and what had he been thinking? Was it too late to take his cushions to the garbage chute aswell?

Was it too late to take the cushions to the garbage chute and then run out a replace all the cushions?

Were the cushions actually fine but it was the rest of the apartment that was the problem, really?

The couch had to go.

There was no way the couch would fit in the garbage chute.

Then he decided to make a pot of coffee, instead of just, y’know, a cup. Just incase they wanted coffee when they got here. Did he have any tea? No. Was it too late to run out and get tea? He didn’t have milk. What if they drank their coffee with milk? Was it too late to run out and get milk and tea and also a kettle?

Oh, the coffee was ready. 

He filled and drank his mug of coffee, then figured he better handwash the mug and dug another two out of the dishwasher to handwash as well because he didn’t actually have that many coffee mugs and he didn’t want to say ‘oh no sorry, I only have four clean mugs so you can’t all have coffee.’ Then he thought about lighting a candle. 

Maybe he should light a candle. 

Did he own a candle?

He had to own a candle.

Surely, someone at some point had given him a candle.

He had to have bought one at some stage. 

Candles were nice.

Why wouldn’t he have one - oh my god that was the buzzer. 

He’d better go let them in. 

* * *

_ If he had been there, he could’ve done something. _

_ He could’ve made a deal. _

_ He could’ve invoked Oni. _

_ He could’ve done something. _

_ And then Maka wouldn’t be crying. _

_ But she was. _

_ She’d done… she’d done great all day. She hadn’t stuttered through her speech, remained calm and level. Hadn’t choked up when she’d mentioned Hiro, and how he should’ve graduated with them. She’d faced forward, stoic and steely-eyed when his mother had gone up to collect his honourary diploma. _

_ But that was earlier. _

_ Soul hadn’t even wanted to go to the party, but his mother had convinced him. _

_ Maka was sitting at the end of the garden, on the wall. She was facing away from the house. The drop to the ground was higher on that side, and you could see most of the town. It looked good from up here, where you were far enough away that you couldn’t see the stain of all the terrible things that happened here. _

_ Her breath was catching, the ugly, worrisome kind of crying. Someone had done her make-up for her, far more than Maka had ever normally worn, and her tears were streaking her mascara down her cheeks in rivers. _

_ Soul swung his legs over the wall to sit beside her. _

* * *

“This is my apartment,” Soul gestured behind him, trying to remember everything he’d ever been told about being a good house guest. “Make yourselves at home, does anyone want coffee?”

Maka eyes were wide and green and startled. He stepped back, syllables dying in his throat as she came into herself and pushed past him into the house - he hadn’t really expected her to, he’d thought she might send one of the others to chat not the whole… Armada - they were all here.It was like the highschool reunion he’d been planning on never attending. Well. 

Almost all. 

They’d tightened in the gaps, filling in the spaces left behind.

You would never notice there was anyone missing, if you didn’t know. 

Ten years was a long time, after all. 

“I don’t suppose you have any tea?” Tsubaki asked, breaking a silence Soul wasn’t prepared to fill alone. 

“No, tea, sorry,” He should’ve run out to get the tea. And the milk. What if they’d developed a nut allergy in the last ten years. He only had almond milk. “Do you want some water instead?”

“No, no, thanks,” She said, then elbowed Black Star indiscreetly. Not much had changed there, evidently.

“I would love some coffee!” Black Star said loudly. 

“We don’t have time for coffee,” Maka said sharply. Black Star looked disappointed, but Soul didn’t want to risk her ire, them deciding he wasn’t worth helping anymore to… give Black Star coffee. “What’s the issue?”

“Just, uh, follow me, to the, uh, bathroom.”

* * *

_ “How did you know Hiro Duncan?” _

_ “We were in some of the same classes?” _

_ “And you were friends right?” _

_ “We used to be, I guess.” _

_ “That’s not what everyone else says,” the officer looks tired, like he wants this to be put to rest as soon as possible. “You sat together every day at lunch.” _

_ “There’s not enough tables that I can have one to myself,” Soul answered. There’s a right answer and a wrong answer to most of these questions, but Soul doesn’t know any of them. “But we weren’t friends.” _

_ “Why not? Didn’t you like him?” _

_ “He was okay, I guess,” Soul said, and then, before he can stop himself: “A little self-righteous.” _

_ “What do you mean by that?” _

_ “He didn’t listen to anyone, not even people who cared about him,” Soul took a drink of water. Wasn’t thirsty, but the questions were getting harder and Soul wanted time to think between answers. _

_ The officer made a thoughtful humming noise. Soul didn’t know what that meant. _

_ “Were you one of those people?” _

_ “No,” Soul said, then changed his mind. “I didn’t want him to die or anything… but I’m not surprised.” _

_ “You aren’t surprised?” _

_ “Yeah, I always thought one of them would die, sooner or later.” _

_ “But not you?” _

_ “I didn’t – they were always doing stupid shit and going dangerous places.” _

_ “Not you?” _

_ “No. I got hurt pretty badly once, and then… I stopped hanging out with them. They were trouble.” _

_ “That doesn’t seem right – you look like the kind of kid who's always in trouble.” _

_ “Yeah, and Hiro had a pocket protector,” Soul countered. “Shouldn’t you know better about books and their covers?” _

* * *

Soul’s bathroom wasn’t really big enough for seven people to be in comfortably. The situation also stood in such a way that made Soul think that there was no bathroom large enough for them all to exist in comfortably at all. 

Nevertheless, he gestured them through the door. 

“Why are we in your bathroom, dude that’s - what the fuck,” Black Star said, looking around. “Did you do this?”

“Why would I do this?” Soul said. 

“Because you - “ Tsuabki elbowed Black Star again. 

Everyone went quiet for a moment, and silence is extraordinarily loud in a bathroom. 

“I think this is just a garden variety haunting, Soul,” Maka said.

“It’s not a summoning circle,” Kidd said. “Too assymetrical.”

“So we just do a regular exorcism and call it a day, send Soul a bill - standard rates - of course,” Liz said easily, flashing Soul a winning grin. “Head home, have an early night. There was no need for all of us to come out here.” She said that last part rather pointedly. 

“I didn’t make you come, Liz,” Black Star contested hotly.

“You definitely made me,” Liz said, and looking around, Soul could see the others agreeing. He shrunk into the corner, trying to make himself as small as possible, even though he was taller than everyone else here, and it was a very small bathroom, now that it had seven people in it. “I’m the office manager. I’m an administrator. I’m not supposed to ever be out on calls with all the creepy ghosts and ghouls and…” Liz broke off with a shudder, before sharpening herself to glare at Black Star. “And now I’m here, and there definitely is a ghost and…!”

“Liz do you want to go wait in the car?” Maka asked smoothly. “We don’t really need the whole team out here. I told you I could handle it alone.”

“Can I go wait in the car?” Patti said. “No offense, Soul.”

“Yes, Patti,” Maka said. “Why doesn’t  _ everyone go wait in the car.” _

Soul shrugged, although he wasn’t sure if there was any real way for him not to be offended. 

“As if we’d leave you alone with - “ Tsubaki elbowed him again. “Stop that! I’m right!”

“I told you, he wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t genuine - “

“If I may - “

“You may not!” said Black Star, wheeling around to point at Kidd. “You are automatically on my side in this!”

“I don’t think Soul would have broken a ten year silence to invite us to his home in for a fake ghost,” Kidd continued anyway, much to Black Star’s abject horror and betrayal. 

“It’s not a ghost,” Soul said quietly, but no one heard. 

“Black Star, I never should have told you - “ Maka said. “I said I could handle this alone.”

“What if he tried something?”

Well, now Soul was offended. 

“I didn’t call you guys because I wanted to ‘try’ anything!” Soul yelled suddenly, startling himself. 

“Well, of course you’d say that!” Black Star said. “If I’d had my way, we wouldn’t have come here at all!”

“Oh my god!” Maka said, and even after all these years, Soul recognised the start of an argument that wasn’t going to end anytime soon.

“Let’s go wait in the car, Patti,” Liz said, ushering her out the door. “Does anyone else wanna come wait in the car? Kidd? Tsubaki?”

“There’s a nice coffee place just across the road,” Soul offered after the retreating backs, wishing that he too, could go wait in the car. 

Patti flashed him a thumbs up. 

It was not as reassuring as he thought she wanted it to seem.

Soul pushed himself further into the corner and waited for all hell to break loose. 

“Whatever!” Maka snapped suddenly. “It’s just one teeny exorcism. We can talk about this later.”

“We are going to talk about it,” Black Star said. “Later.”

“Yeah, seems like a quick exorcism should clear this right up,” Maka said, turning around to look at Soul. Soul flinched further into the corner. “Not the writing. That’ll be elbow grease.”

“You can manage that much, right Soul?” Black Star said. Maka looked like she wished Tsubaki was still here to elbow him, and her jaw tightened against whatever biting retort she wanted to send his way.

“I don’t… I don’t need an exorcism,” Soul said. “It’s not a ghost.”

“Who else writes on mirrors and all over bathrooms?”

“Anyway,” Soul said, dodging the question with all the grace of drunk man. “I’m not really able to figure it out, and I know it’s important.”

“So, you just want us to read this?” Black Star looked baffled, and for that matter, so did Maka. Soul wasn’t surprised at their confusion, he wasn’t the one who’d gone on some grand adventure and kept chasing that thrill ever since. More in keeping with Soul’s character would’ve been to wash off the lettering and bury his head in the sand.

For a moment, Soul could swear that Black Star was about to waver in his conviction, and ask if he too, could go wait in the car. Soul didn’t know if he wanted him to go, or to stay. It didn’t matter what Soul wanted in the end, because Black Star took a seat and settled himself in for the long haul. 

“What did you manage to get, Soul?” Maka asked gently. “Do you still wear your glasses?”

Soul grabbed his glasses from where he’d stashed him - he’d never moved past the rose tinted ones, but he did sometimes switch back to an orange pair - on the shelf he kept his towels on, alongside his pitiful notes. 

Maka flicked through them quickly, digesting the little information Soul had gleaned during the hours he had struggled. 

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Soul said, backing slowly out of the bathroom. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

* * *

_ The sheriff’s office picked him up too, when they picked up all the others. Not in the same place, but they rang the doorbell and asked if he would be willing to come in and answer a few questions. _

_ “Is this about Hiro?” _

_ “It’s just a few routine questions.” _

_ “I didn’t know him all that well, but I’ll go.” _

_ His father came with him. Soul was still only seventeen, after all. _

_ The others – Maka, Black Star, Tsubaki, Mortimer and those twins, Patti and Liz – they were all there. It was crowded, but this was the quietest Soul had ever heard them. They were all huddled close together, leaning on each other as best they could despite the uncomfortable plastic chairs and the weight of the situation. _

_ Soul stood apart from them, leaning against the wall. There weren’t enough seats to go around, so he’d told his father to sit. His father was watching him carefully. He didn’t know what he was going to be asked. _

_ They’d probably cooked up a story to cover up whatever had happened, but Soul wasn’t in on it. _

_ How could he be? He wasn’t one of them. _

_ He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. _

_ “Soul? Can we talk to you?” _

* * *

“Soul? Can I talk to you?”

* * *

_ Maka wasn’t crying. _

_ She should be. She looked like she wasn’t crying because everyone wanted her to. Like she was holding in all her tears by sheer force of will. She looked so angry, and upset, and… _

_ Like she needed a friend. _

_ Soul had never liked Hiro, but Maka had. They’d been in love, Soul thought. Everyone thought. For a long time, but they’d only gotten together recently. _

_ Soul would argue that he hadn’t liked anyone, but proximity was almost enough. He’d seen Hiro every day for four years, and now he was dead. The whole school had the day off to go to the funeral. Soul had been near the front, with all the crying members of his friend group. _

_ Soul and Hiro hadn’t been friends, they’d just… sat near each other. _

_ Soul moved to stand beside Maka. _

_ He’d known this would happen eventually, but… they hadn’t. _

_ They really thought that they were invincible. _

_ He reached out to touch her shoulder, and she flinched away. _

_ His hand dropped. _

_ It was too late to be there for her now. _

_ He should’ve gone with them. _

* * *

Soul’s bathroom was barely recognizable, between whatever it was Oni had written all over it, and Maka’s rainbow array of coloured post-it notes. He had no doubt that there was some kind of organizational or categorical system to the colours.

Black Star was typing away on a laptop, and despite his less than optimal typing speed… he seemed to be typing what Maka dictated to him. 

“Okay, Soul,” Maka said, arms akimbo. “So we have a lot of it figured out - we’d be going a lot faster if Black Star was willing to swap out with Liz or Kidd - but we aren’t able to get all of it, so I’m going to ask you a few questions and hopefully we can figure out the rest.”

Maka flipped open Soul’s pitiful notebook. 

“So you were right - it’s mostly English, but unfortunately not all, and you were right that it isn’t a ghost,” Maka said. “I would’ve taken you at your word, but someone didn’t think - “

“It was me,” Black Star said, not looking up from where he had not so subtly started playing Snake. “I don’t think you know jack-shit about anything outside your dumb normie life.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Soul said, feeling a sense of smug satisfaction when Black Star crashed his snake into itself. Black Star restarted the game. 

“And you did get Save Rag, so good job there,” Maka said, cheerfully ignoring Black Star. “So one other thing we noticed - ”

“I noticed,” Black Star said. 

“One other thing that was noticed,” Maka amended, her smile looking very brittle now. “Was that the writing looks like it was done with a finger - in order to determine whether or not you’re possessed, we’ve developed a very handy questionnaire - “

“ ‘I find myself in places without remembering how I got there’,” Black Star intoned dully. “Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree Nor Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree?”

“Why does this matter?” Soul said, feeling an unease creep up his spine. “I don’t see why that’s important.”

“Just answer the questions, Soul,” Maka said, smiling. “It won’t take long.”

“ ‘I find myself in places without remembering how I got there’,” Black Star repeated. “Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree Nor Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree?”

“I’m not possessed!” Soul insisted. The creeping unease was starting to feel more and more like panic. He waved frantically at the walls. “Can’t you just tell me what it means!?”

“Soul, we aren’t saying you’re possessed,” Maka said, aiming for kindness and hitting somewhere closer to gentle condensation. “ And there’s no need to be afraid - it’s just a simple questionnaire.”

“One more: ‘I find myself in places without remembering how I got there’,” Black Star repeated again, stronger. “Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree Nor Disagree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree?”

“I am not possessed!” Soul yelled as he tried to back away, clawing behind him for the door handle. “Leave me alone!”

The sound of Soul voice reverberated around the room, wailing and bouncing and climbing in pitch. The mirror over the sink cracked, and Soul felt the shards of the cheaper mirror on the back of the door slice into him as it exploded outwards.

Maka lurched forward, her fist cracking against his jaw as the shower door crumpled in a cascade of glass. 

* * *

_ The collapse at the old hospital was all over the news. _

* * *

Soul’s head was heavy, and his jaw was throbbing. When he tried to reach up and poke it, he found his other hand came with it. Also, that when he did poke it, it hurt. 

Great. A bruise.

And he was tied up. 

On the floor. 

Soul opened his eyes, and the world took it’s sweet time coming back into focus. 

“What… is happening…” Soul asked, using, frankly more abdominal strength than he’d thought he had, to sit up. He was on the floor of his sitting room, and there was… “Did you paint on my floor?”

He was never getting his deposit back. 

“You failed the questionnaire,” Black Star said. “Probably because you’re possessed.”

“I am not possessed!” Soul said, before scratching at the paint with his thumbnail to test it. It definitely had some kind of sparkle to it, so maybe if he - 

“Don’t touch the paint!” Patti ordered shrilly, smacking Soul with his own mop. “I worked hard on that!”

“How does it come off?” Soul asked, ducking the mop as she swiped at him again. 

A part nestled against the core of Soul, a dark twisted part that Soul mostly identified as Oni, wanted out of the circle. Wanted out of this situation. Soul didn’t have to know much to know that this was a bad idea. 

“It doesn’t!” Patti announced cheerfully, even though she was still holding the mop in a threatening manner. “It’s indelible!”

Soul sagged in defeat. 

Maka squatted in front of him, steepling her fingers.

“So, are you going to be a good demon and come out now?” Maka said. “This doesn’t have to be hard.”

“I’m not possessed!” Soul insisted, getting a little bit sick of repeating himself if he was being honest. “What did the writing in the bathroom say?”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Maka said. All the smiles were gone. Black Star looked astonishingly vindicated. Liz was drinking an iced-coffee and boredly checking her phone. “How long have you been in there?”

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Kidd said. “Let’s get this thing out of Soul, and then go grab lunch.”

“There is nothing inside me!” Soul said, trying to worm his way to the edge of the circle. 

Patti jabbed at him again with the mop, swinging it down hard. Soul rolled out of the way, the mop cracking against the floor hard. Soul rolled in the opposite direction - 

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Tsubaki said evenly, bouncing a sword against the tips of her fingers. 

“What!?” Soul said. “Why do you have a sword, and she had a mop?”

“I left my gun at home,” Patti said sulkily. “This wasn’t even supposed to be a big job… And then Liz wouldn’t even let me borrow hers!”

“It’s not my fault you left yours at home - “ Liz said, spinning the barrel of a revolver easily. 

“Why does anyone need a gun? Or a sword? Or a mop?” Soul said, squirming now that he was surrounded by deadly weapons. Including the mop, maybe most especially the mop. “Let me out, and we can all just talk about this!”

“Would you quit it!?” Maka said, sharply. “You aren’t fooling anyone anymore! Stop pretending to be our friend!”

Black Star winced. 

“How long have you been in there?” Maka asked. “It doesn’t matter - I’m getting you out and then - “

“There is nothing in me!” Soul yelped, tensing his legs to kick back and try get out of the circle pushing against them and - slamming into an enormous barrier of light around the circle. It burned against his skin, not badly, but more like the stinging pain of getting into a hot shower on a cold morning. 

“There’s no point arguing with it, Maka,” Kidd said. “Just start the exorcism.”

“Yeah,” Maka said quietly. “See you on the other side, Soul.” 

“Crux Sacra sit mihi lux!”

That hurt, like a knife ripping through the inside of him, determined to cut away Oni. There wasn’t always a clean line between them though, and it was painful, cutting into him, slicing at the core of him. Soul howled again, slamming himself against the barrier again.

The burn of the edge of the circle wasn’t anything compared to this pain.

“Non draco sit mihi dux!”

Soul roared, and the glass in his kitchen started cracking and splintering. He slammed into the Barrier again, determined to break it. 

“Vade retro Satana!” 

Again and again, Soul threw himself at the barrier, the burn getting worse and worse the more he hit it. Oni was shrieking inside him, and Soul was harmonising, the sound reaching new heights as it climbed and the sound of breaking glass disappeared into it.

“Numquam suade mihi vana!”

The barrier started cracking, creaking and splintering. If the others were saying anything, panicking, arguing or shouting, Soul couldn’t hear it over the sound of his own screaming, looping and building. He threw himself at the barrier again, wrapping the sound around the dark part of himself, holding on to it, embracing the tone of Oni’s shrieking and amplifying it. 

“Sunt mala quae libas!”

Maka setting back, but kept reciting as Soul screamed, raising his voice until it felt like a knife in his throat, reaching and pulling and holding Oni close. 

The barrier shattered, and Soul tried to - 

“Ipse venena bibas!”

And Oni was gone. 

Soul slumped, breathing heavily, surrounded by broken glass. 

* * *

_ Soul hadn’t really planned on going to his prom, but here he was. Wearing a suit, drinking from punch that he hadn’t realised was pre-spiked until after he’d already poured a measure of rum from a flask stuffed in his sock into it. Soul had never drank paint thinner, but he figured drinking this punch was pretty close. _

_ The music sucked, the decorations were lacklustre, the dancing was out of time, and the punch seemed like it had been bland to begin with. There was nothing at this prom worth staying for if you didn’t have friends to make fun of everything with and memories to make. If you weren’t caught in a bittersweet moment between what you had now, and what was going to happen next.  _

_ Soul didn’t have any of that, so he’d settled himself in for a pretty crappy time.  _

_ But Hiro, Maka? Black Star and Tsubaki, Kidd and Liz and Patti? They had all of that. _

_ So why the fuck were they sneaking off? God, but they were not subtle. _

_ Soul stepped to go after them, to follow them. _

_ Maka caught his eye, peeling away from the group, who scrambled out the side door. Soul was pretty sure everyone noticed. Whatever, everyone would just think they were going to get drunk up in one of the rooms.  _

_ “You could…. You could come with us, if you like.” _

_ “Where are you going?” _

_ Soul so badly wanted it to be up to one of the rooms to get drunk.  _

_ “We’re going to the hospital - tonight’s… something big is happening tonight, and we could use the… help.” _

_ Soul looked across the crowded hotel ballroom he didn’t want to be in, and new there was at least one place in the world he wanted to be even less.  _

_ “I can’t do that, Maka.” _

_ “I need you.” _

_ Maka’s eyes were big and beautiful and green and the lacklustre paper decorations looked a little more lustrous all of a sudden. But more than anything, Soul didn’t want to get hurt again. _

_ So he turned away.  _

* * *

Soul came to, to the faint sound of sweeping. 

His throat felt raw and painful, and when he rolled onto his back, the injuries caused by a combination of the barrier and the broken mirror decided to make themselves known. He groaned, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. 

He took a deep breath, the old injury in his chest pulling in a way that it never had before. 

He felt like shit.

He looked like…

He looked like himself. 

Soul got up, remembering to wedge his feet into a pair of shoes - there was glass everywhere.

He yanked open the door, wincing in the bright light.

The whole room glittered, frosted all over in the broken glass, and the others were sweeping, carefully and methodically parcelling the broken glass into newspaper bundles. Liz was on her phone, arguing with someone and perched on the counter, so that her strappy sandaled feet were safely away from the sea of glass that was Soul’s living space. 

“Soul?” Maka looked up, noticed that he was awake. “Are you - ? How are you feeling?”

Soul felt like shit, and he wanted to tell them so, but trying to use his voice felt swallowing glass. All that came out was a low groan, rough around the edges and wavering in the middle.

“Do you remember anything?” Maka asked, stepping closer.

Soul nodded, leaning heavily against the door. He tried to find his voice in his throat again, swallowing around the ache

“How much do you - ?” Maka asked.

“Oni,” Soul said hoarsely, his voice scraping against him.

“What? Do you remember anything?”

“Oni,” Soul said again, firmer and clear, despite the protests of his voice chords. The words thrummed across the apartment, causing the broken glass the shift slightly on the floor. 

“Oni!” 

Glass skittered across the floor, causing the others to jump and step back, noticing something wrong for the first time. But nothing else happened, and Soul finally felt the hollow space in him, the gap in his social calendar, and ached for it. 

Soul didn’t really have enough voice left to cry, but an ugly sob wrenched its way out of him anyway. 

* * *

_ Did it matter? At all? How much whatever it was, how much it had hurt him? That he’d nearly died? None of them were stupid, so what did it take for them to be smarter than this? _

* * *

“I don’t understand, we destroyed the demon,” Maka said, distantly. “Soul, what’s wrong?”

Everything was far away, and Soul couldn’t stop crying, a hollow place inside of him, where something dark and twisted and familiar and not unwelcome or unwanted wrapped around the core of him had been ripped out, and the places it had been twined into him were bleeding.

There was a warm weight wrapped around his shoulders, and someone was manipulating him, moving him through the room, leading him to a chair across the room. It was free of glass - someone had cleared it already. Soul sat in the chair, and a warm mug was pressed into his hands.

He folded his hands around the mug, but he didn’t feel like drinking.

He did look up at the others, ignoring their questions and still hiccuping occasionally. 

“Soul?”

He didn’t answer.

“Soul?” 

Patti moved across the room, sweeping carefully in the background. 

It was cold in here, now that there weren’t any windows. 

“Soul?” Maka said, increasingly concerned.

He didn’t answer.

“What do you guys think we should do?” Maka asked turning to the others. “We can’t leave him like this.”

“Maka, I am trying to sort out his windows,” Liz covered the speaker of her mobile to answer. “I cannot do everything at once.”

“Has anyone ever seen anything like this before?” Maka added.

“Once.” 

That was Tsuabki and Black Star, in a grime kind of unison.

The others seemed to know what this meant.

“But there’s no way - Soul managed to call us this morning!” Maka said. “There’s no was he was… under for long enough to actually do anything. Soul? Can you hear me Soul?”

Soul didn’t answer that time either. 

“Soul, please,” Maka pleaded gently, before turning to the others. “How long do you think - ?”

“Impossible to say,” Kidd answered. “There’s no way of knowing how long someone was possessed for.”

Soul stirred.

“Soul? Soul!”

“I wasn’t possessed,” Soul said hoarsely. His voice was quiet, and the others had to lean in to hear him. 

“Soul,” Maka said. “I know you… aren’t involved in that anymore, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.” 

“I wasn’t possessed,” he insisted again, his voice causing the glass to skitter across the floor. 

Great.

It seemed like once he had that feature unlocked, there was no closing it back up. 

“Soul, I know it’s hard to - “

“I wasn’t possessed!” Soul said louder. “It… it wasn’t like that!”

“Soul, then what was it like?” Maka said, forgetting completely that he was an invalid.

“It.. it.. It was fair trade!” Soul said, struggling to find the best way to explain it without explaining it at all. 

“Fair… fair trade for what, Soul?” Maka asked. “What could possible be worth carrying a demon around with you?”

* * *

_ Soul didn’t know if they’d been to the hospital since he’d been injured, or since he’d come back to school. He wouldn’t want to, knowing what was there.  _

_ Maka looked uneasy at the prospect as well, but Hiro held her hand, and she seemed reassured. They’d go again this weekend, and Soul would stay at home.  _

_ Going back there was a death sentence, and besides, Maka didn’t want him around too much anyway.  _

* * *

“Oni isn’t… okay, so he is a demon,” Soul admitted. “But it’s not like - “

“Oni… “ Maka said thoughtfully. “You said that name before - you were calling out to him… calling him back.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I was the one who asked him to leave,” Soul said bitterly. 

“And before… I’ve heard that name before,” Maka said. “Soul, I’ve definitely - the house!”

“Yeah,” Soul said. “You’ve heard it before.”

“The old… at the manor house?” Maka asked

Soul nodded. 

“That long?” Maka said. “Soul that was… Soul that was at least ten years, even longer because…”

“Twelve years,” Soul said. “Give or take a couple of months.”

“Twelve years,” Maka repeated quietly, thoughtfully.

He could see the mental calculation all of them were doing.

One plus one.

“So… before I ever met you?”

Soul nodded, looking down.

The others looked around at each other, trying to - 

“But we were friends,” Kidd started. “We were friends in… elementary… school…”

“Did we ever really - “

Should he… Soul had one chance, if he ever wanted to prove that… that it was really him… that they’d only ever known him… that they’d never been friends. But was it worth it? It wasn’t like they were a part of his life now, that they were…

“I guess we never - “

Soul took a deep breath.

* * *

_ Soul didn’t sit with them anymore.  _

_ No one asked why. _

* * *

“You’ve never met Oni,” Soul said assertively, putting an end to the discussion. “Don’t… don’t start wondering about if you guys ever really knew me or not now.”

“How-?”

“Do you guys know what a time share is?” Soul asked, thinking of a mostly successfully metaphor on the spot. 

Everyone nodded, albeit with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

“It was kind of like that,” Soul explained, instantly transforming his metaphor into a simile. “I had the ‘condo’ most of the time, but Oni got it every third Saturday.”

“You own a condo?” Patti said, in awe. “I thought this was rental - wait do you have another place? Where? Can we go?”

“It’s not a real condo,” Kidd said, turning to Patti, who had abandoned her sweeping duties to chat. “Soul is the condo.”

“Why would… why would you agree to that?” Maka asked. “I know it was only one day a month, but still. A demon? Willingly?”

“I’m trans,” Soul said, with the kind of blank pride that comes with time and growing into yourself. “And it was 2008.”

There was a pause, before everyone mildly started agreeing that was reason enough. Kidd squinted at Soul for a minute, but his eyes widened and all of those earlier, blurred memories cleared up. 

“And why would a demon agree to… a time-share.”

“Everything… it’s better,” Soul said, by way of explanation. “When you are made flesh, everything is better. Oni never explained much more than that.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, if you hadn’t exorcised him, you could’ve asked him yourself.”

“Is… now that he’s gone, are you going to - “ Maka danced around the question.

“No,” Soul said. “I don’t think it’ll make a difference, but we never exactly discussed what would happen if he was forcibly ripped from my body.”

“You called us - !”

“I didn’t ask you guys here to exorcise me!” Soul shouted. “That was a choice you made, not me, and I asked you, again and again, not to do it!”

“What were we supposed to do?”

“You were supposed to help me figure out who Rag was, and how to save him,” Soul said. “That was all I wanted, and now Oni is  _ gone and whoever this Rag guy is.. he’s just going to just…”  _

“It was his brother,” Maka said. “From what we could figure out… Rag was Oni’s brother.”

* * *

_ Soul didn’t get many visitors in the hospital - he wasn’t allowed any that weren’t family for a long time, and by the time that was lifted he was itching to get out of there anyway. _

_ Maka did visit once.  _

_ “Hi, Soul,” she smiled. “I would’ve brought flowers, but they aren’t allowed.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ “Still…” _

_ “It’s okay.” _

_ Soul looked away.  _

_ “Would you like to sit down?” _

_ Maka nodded, then said: “If that’s okay?” _

_ “I wouldn’t’ve offered, if, y’know, it wasn’t.” _

_ Maka sat right on the edge of the seat. If she leaned too far forward, she might tip over. Her hands were folding and unfolding in her lap, twisting in the hem of her skirt. Whatever she was doing, she was obviously engrossed in it, refusing to look up at Soul.  _

_ There wasn’t a clock in the room, but Soul watched his heart monitor and waited for Maka to speak.  _

_ “Did you mean it?” _

_ “Mean what?” _

_ “You know… what you said. Before,” Maka looked up at him, then thought the better of it, and looked back down. Soul thought her eyes might’ve looked damp, but it was too quick a glance to tell. “When we were in the hospital. The other hospital. Not this one. Right after - “ _

_ Maka made a vague slashing gesture. _

_ “I was nearly sliced in twaine?” _

_ “Soul!”  _

_ “What?” _

_ “Don’t be so - “ _

_ “Insensitive? It was my mortal wound.” _

_ “It wasn’t a mortal wound,” Maka argued. “You’re…” _

_ “I’m fine now, you know that right?” Soul coughed, looking away. “Almost anyway. I’ll be out of here soon.” _

_ “We miss you, in school,” Maka said suddenly. “I miss you.” _

_ “Well, like I said. I’ll be out soon.” _

_ “You didn’t answer my question,” Maka said, looking at him intently. “Did you mean it, what you said? You lost a lot of blood. I thought you were going to die. It’s okay if you didn’t mean it.” _

_ Soul looked a Maka for a long minute, trying to figure out what the right answer was. Did she want him to mean it? Was she trying to give him an out, or an in? What would change if he meant it? Would anything? Would it be easier if he pretended he didn’t? Was it worth the weight the lie would be, sitting on his chest, trying not to resent Hiro, and trying not to begrudge her happiness? Would they still be able to be friends if he did? _

_ Was it worth the risk if they weren’t? _

_ “Yeah, I did mean it.” _

_ “I’m with Hiro - “ _

_ “I know, I just… I didn’t want to lie to you, I guess.” _

_ Maka rushed to her feet, the chair tipping backwards. She was out the door by the time it hit the ground. _

* * *

“We’ll help you save him,” Maka said. “We never meant to - “

“We’ll save him,” Black Star said. 

* * *

_ “If you’re ever in this much trouble again, kid, say my name three times. I’ve beefed up my vessel a bit, added a couple of defensive features, so maybe next time you could at least try holding your own.” _

_ Soul didn’t know what Oni had done in the hospital all day, but based on the dried chalky black writing on the mirror, it might’ve been stealing coal for the exclusive purpose of writing this message. Not coal, exactly, something that had been liquid, then dried to this nasty black flakey texture. It had run down the mirror, enough that some of it had pooled around the faucet.  _

_ It smelt like iron - and oh my god it was blood. _

_ What the fuck, Oni.  _

-

Liz brought Soul to the Emergency Room, where they were waiting for about an hour.

“You can come through here now, Soul,” a nurse said, kindly. “Do you want your girlfriend?”

“She not my girlfriend,” Soul said reflexively. 

“That’s alright,” the nurse said again, kindly. “Do you want her to come anyway?”

“Nah, we’re alright,” Soul said, following the nurse.

They moved through the doors, and Soul glanced through the small glass panels to see Liz already on her phone again.

“Now, Soul,” the nurse said, again, so incredibly kindly. “I don’t mean to pry - “

“That’s okay,” Soul answered. “History’s important.”

“But, I read that you said you got hurt… by falling backwards into a mirror?”

Soul nodded.

“But I can’t help but notice that you have a bruise on your jaw…”

“Yeah,” Soul said, rubbing the bruise ruefully. “This is gonig to be a bad one, I can tell.”

“And I just want you to know that if you’re in trouble…” the nurse lowered her voice. “Or if that young lady did anything to hurt you - “

“What?”

“There are plenty of supports available and we can help you - “

“Oh. Oh!” Soul said, realising suddenly the nature of the conversation. “No! That’s not - she’s an old friend from highschool I haven’t seen in years, and she’s an interior designer now - we were redecorating my place… it was like something straight out of Charlie Chaplain!”

The nurse did not look convinced, but she ushered Soul through to a young doctor anyway. He seemed nervous, but not enough that Soul was worried about it. 

Halfway through the tedious task of taking all the glass out of Soul’s back, he was interrupted by a supervisor, who walked right in, saw Soul’s bare chest and recognised him immediately. 

“You know,” she joked, “When I told you I didn’t want to see you here for the next ten years, that didn’t mean you have to go get yourself hurt just at the start of the new decade.”

Soul shrugged, smiling at the familiar face, but the resident told him to keep still before he got the chance to make a joke. 

* * *

_ They had Soul up and walking around now. There wasn’t much to see in the hospital, and Soul couldn’t get too far without getting winded and needing to take a break. Everywhere he went, he was leaning heavily on an IV stand.  _

_ He didn’t go far, it was easy to get turned around, and all the corridors looked the same. _

_ Getting lost made him feel like a confused eldery man, and one nurse had tried to help him back to geriatrics for five minutes before realising that Soul was a minor.  _

_ And they were talking about weaning him off the IV, so he wasn’t even going to have that for very much longer. They’d give him crutches or something. He was making good progress.  _

* * *

The contractors would be over later today, Liz assured him, and she’d get him back into his place as soon as possible. In the meantime, he could stay in their base of operations.

Kidd’s house.

Which was almost exactly as Soul remembered it being, and somehow a little more battered at the same time. He’d dumped a bag on the bed before Liz had hauled him away, for the grand tour.

He’d been in Kidd’s house before, and not that much had changed.

“And this is our co-working space!” Liz announced, steering Soul down into the basement where the others all looked up on him entrance. 

Soul remember the basement from before- there had been a pool table, and a ratty couch. An old bar that had been installed before Kidd’s parents had bought the house, and that his dad was always promising to take out. The washer-dryer.

That was all gone.

Well, not all.

Soul could tell that the big conference table in the middle of the room was the pool table with a flat wooden panel that covered the felt. And the shelves behind the bar had been left up, but instead of dusty bottles, they were stacked with books. 

There were individual desks scattered around the room, each with varying degrees of tidiness. Liz pointed hers out to him, and was about explain who owned each of the others when Maka called them both over.

“Okay,” Maka said. “We’re going to rescue Rag, Soul, I promise.”

The table was covered in everything they did know, Soul’s cracked antique mirror in the centre, a vortex of evidence and notes spiralling outwards. The printer in the background was still humming as it turned out all the photos that Maka had taken. Patti waiting impatiently for each sheet that she handed off like a relay runner. Maka was moving to reunite post-its with the print outs as the others moved to assemble them as they appeared, like a jigsaw puzzle.

They were a well oiled machine, and Soul was a spanner in the works, feeling in the way no matter what he tried to do.

* * *

_ Soul ached. He wasn’t supposed to hurt like this - that wasn’t part of the deal. He was supposed to be stronger, faster. Sturdier. Keeping a possession vessel in tip-top shape was a lot of work, so he’d been given a head start. He shouldn’t hurt like this. _

_ It shouldn’t be possible. _

_ His chest burned, but along the core there was a icy-coldness. A bitter sting that burned against the heat of everything else. His chest pulled with every breath, so Soul would hold back, see how long he could put off the next breath. See how long he go without this ache. _

* * *

“Rag is Oni’s younger brother,” Maka said. “We know that much, and we couldn’t quite - “

“Once we figured that out, and that Soul was possessed…” Black Star said. “We stopped trying to figure it out, and started planning how to…”

“Okay, yes,” Soul said. “I’m still not happy you exorcised me, but we don’t have to dance around it the whole time.”

“Kidd,” Maka said, firmly. “You start pulling books, see if you can’t find anything on this Rag, or even Oni, the more we know, the better we can deal with this. Liz, you run the runes through the database, see if we get a hit. Tsubaki, Black Star, stay with me. Patti?”

“Yep?”

“You’re doing great, keep it up.”

* * *

_ The next time he woke up, he didn’t panic. _

_ It was daytime, and he just really need to piss.  _

_ He was connected to a lot of machines though, so he thought he’d better ask before trying to disconnect himself from anything. Whenever someone did that in a movie, it always freaked Soul out. _

_ “Hello?” Soul called. “Can I get some help?” _

_ A nurse came running, and she only looked a little annoyed that there wasn’t anything really wrong with him. _

_ “Oh, you’re awake!” she smiled at him, completely over the fact that he wasn’t in serious need of help. “I’ll call the doctor right away.” _

_ She left again, and Soul couldn’t do anything but wait for her to come back with the doctor, his bladder getting fuller by the second.  _

* * *

“Does anyone want coffee?” Soul asked. 

“Coffee would be great, the machine’s over - “

“That’s a monstrosity,” Soul said. “I will be back with real coffee.”

* * *

_ The first time Soul properly woke up, it was the middle of the night. His skin felt like it was pulled tight, and he was gasping for air, but his lungs weren’t - they weren’t big enough. He wasn’t getting enough.  _

_ He wanted to move, to let someone know that he couldn’t breathe, he wasn’t able to breathe, his lungs, his lungs weren’t working - but he couldn’t. It was like trying to move through concrete.  _

_ “Deep breaths, now.” _

_ He was trying! They weren’t working, his lungs - they were too small, had they always been this small why can’t he get enough air? _

_ “You’re safe here, Soul,” the voice said again. “We’re going to put you back to sleep.” _

_ And then they did. _

* * *

“This is great,” Maka said, sighing. “Thanks so much.”

Coffees - and one tea, and a caramel macchiato - distributed, Soul went back to sitting idly on his phone. 

* * *

_ This time it was easier. Not easy, but easier. Soul made the effort to open his eyes. They felt gritty, and peeled apart unwillingly. It was far too bright in here, and Soul closed them again reflexively, blinking slowly to try and adjust.  _

_ He eyes didn’t want to focus, and it was a lot of work to convince his tired brain that it would be worth the effort. It smelt like bleach, the scented kind that smells faintly of something flowery, but mostly of bleach. All he could see was the ceiling, and turning his head or trying to point his eyes in a different direction seemed like a dangerous venture. _

_ The ceiling was made of square tiles in a pinkish colour. The were flecked. _

_ Soul closed his eyes again. _

* * *

There’s nothing here about Oni, or Rag, or any demonic brothers that have anything close to those names,” Kidd said, sliding another text back into the shelf. “Here!”

Kidd thrust a book at Soul. Soul flinched away, before gingerly accepting it.

“Check the index for mentions of them, or anything else that seems related,” Kidd said.

“I’m… not the best reader,” Soul said, carefully, taking out his tinted glasses. “But I’ll do what I can.”

* * *

_ Everything was so heavy, like his blood had been replaced with mercury, heavy and sluggish.  _

_ It didn’t seem worth the effort it was taking to stay awake, so Soul didn’t bother. _

* * *

“We got a hit on the runes!” Liz said, jumping suddenly. “Norse! Really old norse! They aren’t all letters - some of them are traditional depictions of norse gods. I’ll keep running them through.”

* * *

_ Everything was far away, and getting closer seemed like a bad idea.  _

_ Soul decided to stay put for the minute.  _

* * *

“Nevermind that book,” Kidd said, trading the book Soul was slowly scanning through for another. “Take this one, we’re narrowing just to norse legends - we’ll broaden it again later if we have to.”

Kidd snapped the book closed and replaced easily, selecting another one for himself. 

* * *

_ “Soul!” Maka was crying.  _

_ Was she crying because of him? _

_ Soul didn’t mean to do that. _

_ Maka wasn’t supposed to cry.  _

_ She had her hands on his chest, holding him together. It hurts, where her hands are pressing in, but it hurts the whole way along his torso. There was blood everywhere. _

_ That was his blood.  _

_ There wasn’t supposed to be that much of his blood outside him. _

_ Was it supposed to be that red? Had Oni made a mistake? Was his blood that red before? He’d never seen so much of it before. Maka pressed harder, and Soul screamed in agony. He bucked up against her hands, and Maka ripped them away, flinching for a second before steeling herself and pressing the two halves of his chest back together.  _

_ “Soul, Soul I’m sorry, okay?” Maka said. She was still crying, but she was trying to sound authoritative instead. It wasn’t working - her voice was wobbling, and cracking, he words getting cut off by broken sobs. She glanced over her shoulder. “I know it hurts but you just have to hold on, okay, can you do that?” _

_ Soul pushed a high shriek of pain through his teeth instead of answering, but it didn’t matter. Maka wasn’t paying attention anyway. She was straining to look over her shoulder at Hiro, who was still fighting off the waifish creature that had nearly split Soul from his navel to his jawbone. _

_ She lightened the pressure on his chest momentarily, but when Soul groaned again, she turned to press against his chest. She couldn’t see them both at the same time.  _

_ Hiro was doing fine. He had a sword of legend. Soul had a deal that didn’t cover this.  _

_ “Soul, you’re going - “ she trailed off, glancing over her shoulder quickly again. “Soul you’re going to be fine. We’re both going to be fine - Hiro’s here now.” _

_ She sounded like she was reassuring herself as much as she was reassuring Soul. Maybe more. Soul didn’t think reassurance was going to do much for him. His vision was darkening on the edges, softening Maka to a familiar blur.  _

_ “Maka,” Soul said, and it hurt to talk. His lungs protested again every breathe, and the words rattled in his throat. “Maka, I should’ve… I wish I’d told you… I really…” _

_ If the bloodloss didn’t get him, embarrassment might.  _

_ “Soul, you’re going to be fine - “ _

_ “I think I love you, Maka,” Soul said, choking around a combination of the words and the blood in his throat. He coughed, blood bubbling around his teeth. “I’m pretty sure.” _

_ “Soul - you’re not, don’t be… Soul!”  _

_ The softer dark circle that was filling in the spaces around Maka’s tearstained face closed, and Soul was far away from everything.  _

* * *

“Can someone - ? Oh.” the voice was soft, quiet and faint. Soul could barely hear it. The person the voice came from was thin, and pale all over, like something left out in the sun. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

The others froze for a minute, looking up as if suddenly remembering that none of them had introduced Soul to the other inhabitants of the house. 

“Oh!” Maka said, recovering and bounding over to them. “Sorry! Chrona, this is Soul, he’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

“Nice to meet you, Chrona,” Soul said, sticking out his hand. 

Chrona frowned at Soul, then reached out slowly, switching the jar in their hand from left to right. 

“Nice to meet you too, Soul,” Chrona said firmly, before turning to Maka and saying just as loudly: “Are you sure I haven’t met Soul before? And can you open this?”

Maka took the jar from Chrona and twisted the lid sharply, the seal popping. 

“No,” Maka said. “You’ve never met before.”

* * *

_ Where was Hiro!? Where was that sword wielding bastard when you needed him? With his sword?  _

_ “Where is he?” _

_ “Hiro has to go to his mom’s birthday? Remember?” Maka hissed back.  _

_ “How do we get out? That thing is blocking the exit!”  _

_ “Sssh! It’ll hear us!”  _

_ Soul risked a glance over the pitted and rotting reception counter. _

_ Whatever it was, it had been thin and pitiful when they found it, skin stretching grotesquely over the fragile bones of its face as it shivered, coughing and choking. It coughed up something black and viscous, before using a forearm to scrub it’s mouth clean.  _

_ Whatever colour its fine hair was, it was too tangled and dirty to make out. _

_ Soul had recoiled, flinching away from the sight, but Maka had crouched beside it, speaking in a low, soothing voice.  _

_ “Are you okay?” she said. “Come on, we’ll get you to the real hospital -“  _

_ Quickly, faster than Soul thought humanly possible, the thing’s arm blurred through the air, whipping around to backhand Maka. _

_ It’s hand cracked against her jaw, and Maka was flung backwards, slamming into the wall. Maka moves to get up, reapproach the creature, willing to assume that had been reflex, an instinct born of fear. Soul saw the glint in its milky blind eye, shining with a satisfaction borne of knowing it had them fooled, and grabbed Maka’s hand, sprinting in the opposite direction.  _

_ She tugged against him, but Soul borrowed a little bit of strength from Oni and she couldn’t pull herself free. _

_ “Soul! It needs our help!”  _

_ “It wants to hurt us, Maka!”  _

_ It howled, shrieking in indignation that it had been robbed of its prize. Maka had stopped resisting, and started sprinting.  _

_ And now they were about twenty feet away from the exit, but the… whatever it was, was prowling around. It didn’t even look close to human anymore, too skinny and stretched out, its joints looked sharp against the skin, and it snapped its jaw, beads of that black, tarry liquid splattering across the floor. _

_ Soul ducked back behind the receptionist desk, which was looking less and less like a sturdy, reliable shelter and more and more like the rotting wooden counter it was. Maka looked like she was reaching the same conclusion.  _

_ “I think we need to make a break for it,” Maka whispered. “It’s not that far from here to the door.” _

_ “What if it follows us out?” _

_ “I don’t think it can leave the hospital,” Maka said. It doesn’t know where we are, but it hasn’t gone outside to look for us, either.” _

_ “Do you have anything we could throw?” _

_ Maka patted her pockets, then shook her head.  _

_ “All I have are my keys, and…” _

_ “And what? Just ring the doorbell.”  _

_ “Why don’t you throw your keys?” _

_ “I left them at home, anyway, Maka, just throw the keys.” _

_ “I can’t! There’s no one home to let me in!”  _

_ “You can just stay at mine, okay?” _

_ “My Papa’ll kill me if he finds out!”  _

_ “That thing is going to kill you, Maka!”  _

_ She was still clutching her keys.  _

_ Soul pulled open one of the drawers of the reception desk - the wood was swollen with age. It was empty, but Maka got the idea and tried another one. _

_ The next one Soul tried was locked, but Maka struck gold on her third try. Well, close enough to striking gold, when the handle of the drawer broke off in her hand. She bounced it in her palm, testing the weight. It was a little metal one, round and rusting.  _

_ “Okay, I’m going to throw this in the other direction, and the. We’re going to make a break for it, right?” _

_ “Yeah, that was kind of the idea.” _

_ “Do you want to throw it?” _

_ “You have better aim.” _

_ “When have you ever seen me throw anything?” _

_ “What I meant was I, personally, can’t aim for shit and just guessed you were better,” Soul said, chancing a peek at the… monster. He didn’t want to call it that. He just couldn’t think of anything else either. “Okay, now throw.” _

_ Maka threw the handle as hard as she could, in the direction they’d come from. Whatever it was, it flinched towards the sound, and took an unhurried step towards it. _

_ Soul was already on his feet, pulling Maka to the exit. She was lagging behind, looking over her shoulder. She stumbled over something, but Soul hauled her upright -  _

_ “Maka!” He hissed. “We have to go now!” _

_ She shook her head to clear it, and started sprinting, outpacing him easily. She was dragging him now and they were almost in the clear. _

_ The doors had been stiff, squealing and fighting every time you tried to open them. Soul had hated the noise, so one day he brought a can of WD-40 with him, solved that problem.  _

_ The creature dropped in front of them, the ground creaking and cracking under the deceptively slight looking figure, something flashed through the air, and Soul yanked Maka back, pulling her behind him.  _

_ “Hiro!” Maka gasped. _

* * *

“I’ve got it,” Kidd said, striding across the room to hand Maka a book, pointing out a specific passage to her. “It’s - “

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They looked at each other.

“Ragnorok,” Maka said. “Oni’s brother is Ragnorok.”

Everyone stilled, in the room and their gazes settled on Soul. 

“That’s… Ragnorok killed Hiro,” Maka said. “And he was supposed to be the end of the world.”

* * *

_ Soul didn’t really think it was fair for Maka to look at him like that, and ask him to come to the hospital, and hold Hiro’s hand while she did it.  _

_ He also didn’t think he knew how to say no, when she did. But above all and on the topic of fairness, he didn’t think it was fair to ask Maka not to be his friend if she wouldn’t be more. _

_ He didn’t know what made her choose Hiro - was it the sword, the way he complimented her openly, without a defensive sting in the tail of the sentence? Was it his regular teeth, the ones that made it so easy for him to smile and laugh freely, instead of clenching his jaw in the face of joy.  _

_ He didn’t know if she never really saw him as a real option, or if he was just the other guy that made her realize how much perfect, more perfect and good Hiro really was.  _

_ What he did know, was that it would hurt him to say yes, but it would hurt Maka if he said no. _

_ “Yeah, I’ll meet you there?” Soul said. “Usual time?” _

_ The way Maia’s face lit up almost made up for the sharp sting in his chest.  _

* * *

“Maka, can I talk to you,” Soul asked pulling her aside. “I think we need to go back to the hospital.”

“Soul, apart from the fact that the hospital is barely standing, you haven’t been back since - “

“Yeah, but I think, I think we need some serious firepower deal with this.”

“What kind of firepower do you think - Soul you can’t think - “

“We need that sword,” Soul said. “This is a lot bigger than some two-bit excorism or whatever it is you usually deal with.”

“And you think you could pull it out?”

“No, but I think you could,” Soul said. 

“I’m not - “ Maka eyes widened, and she looked down. “I’m not Hiro.”

“If any of us could... “ Soul swallowed. “I think you could. And I don’t think swords are meant to be left in damp basements.”

“It’s… it’s not.. In a damp basement,” Maka said quietly. “I know, I was supposed to… part of the deal was to bring the sword back, after… Hiro died. That’s how the story goes. I wasn’t really… I didn’t want to let him go just yet, and I wasn’t ready to go back there.”

“What did you do with the legendary sword, please don’t tell me you buried it with him.”

“No! We didn’t, I didn’t have anything to do with - we were under investigation for his murder, Soul,” Maka said. “We weren’t let anywhere near him until the actual funeral.”

“Where is it then?” Soul said. “Where do you even keep something like that?”

“It’s…  _ undermybed,”  _ Maka said, quietly. “I left it under my bed.”

* * *

_ Soul didn’t know what happened every third Saturday.  _

_ He figured Oni would like, write it on a post-it note or something, if it was really important. He just told his friends that he ‘had a thing’ and hoped that no one ever asks either what the thing was of how it went.  _

_ He was not very good at thinking on the spot. _

_ That didn’t matter right now.  _

_ What mattered wasn’t what he did on Saturday, but what had happened while he wasn’t around so that Hiro and Maka were holding hands under the table.  _

_ They blushed whenever they made eye contact.  _

_ Soul wanted to know. _

_ He didn’t want to know.  _

_ Something sharp and angry curled in his chest when he looked at them. _

_ So he didn’t.  _

* * *

“You know, I thought you meant your… your bed now,” Soul said.

“Nope.”

* * *

_ “What did you want to talk about?” Maka asked. She was a little bit shorter than Soul, but not by much. He’d get taller, but you couldn’t change everything at once. He was already a little bit taller than he’d been before. _

_ Soul shrugged, he hadn’t really wanted to talk about anything in particular. He just wanted… He just wanted to have her on her own. He didn’t really know what to say now though. He mostly just wanted to listen, to have to direct her cheerful, bubbly voice at him, and him alone as she talked theories and research.  _

_ “Soul, you’re acting really strange lately - “ Maka said. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about whatever’s going on with you?” _

_ Soul shrugged again, still at a loss for words. He shook his head.  _

_ “We don’t have to talk, then, I guess.” _

_ Soul leaned into Maka, knocking his head gently against hers. He stayed there, leaning into her space. The air between them was thin, and Soul felt a little light headed at the proximity. He could feel her warm breath against his skin. Soul glanced down at her lips, she was biting them, but she stopped when he looked. Soul reached up, and stroked a thumb over her cheek.  _

_ She looked back up at his eyes, and Soul could feel his cheeks get warm. She was blushing faintly though, so he figured that fair was fair.  _

_ He leaned in, kissing her softly. She leaned up to meet him eagerly, wobbling slightly. Soul put his hand on her waist to steady her. She pressed into the contact, wrapping her arms around his neck. Maka opened her mouth to deepen the kiss, before pulling away suddenly. _

_ Soul felt cold suddenly, aching in all the places he wasn’t touching her. She pushed his hand off her waist. He’d forgotten about that one. The ground was rough here, and it was easy to lose your footing.  _

_ Maka stumbled, and his hands moved to steady her before he remembered that she doesn’t want that. She stepped back, away from him. There wasn’t more than a couple of feet between them, but it felt like miles.  _

_ “I can’t… we can’t… I just - “ _

_ Maka turned tail and fled, running into the night.  _

* * *

Soul hadn’t been in Maka’s room much as a teenager. Most of the time they spent together was in the hospital, or school, or slowly walking home. But he’d been in it a few times, and it looked mostly the same now as it did then.

A little stale, maybe, like nobody came in here that much, which posters that he didn’t remember being embarrassing then, but maybe were a little now. There was a lot of photos pinned up around the room, faded from a decade of light exposure. 

Soul squinted at one, god.

He’d been so round in the face, soft and young looking. 

They all had, smiling and grinning. Laughing together. 

“Soul?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Soul said, looking over his shoulder. “We really were just kids then, huh?”

“Yeah, and I thought you were such a bad boy,” Maka scoffed. “That leather jacket really had me fooled.”

“Hey!” Soul protested. “That jacket was cool! And I was a bad boy!”

Maka started laughing. Maka kept laughing. Maka had to  _ sit down because she was laughing so hard.  _ Soul waited for her to finish, maybe explain why she thought that was funny before he decided to explain why this was maybe hurting him just a little.

“We were all so stupid Soul,” Maka said, catching her breathe. “I thought… I thought we were on some amazing adventure, and I thought you were just a part of that. Just… some other guy, a bad boy, the other boy who was supposed to make me realise that I was meant to be with Hiro all along? And we were going to be happy together forever once this was done, and that it would be done, and over and then everything after would be - “

“Boring?”

“Normal? I would go to college and become a lawyer and then Hiro and I would get married and have some kids and... I didn’t think there would always be another something, another fight, another monster, and I didn’t think… I didn’t think any of us could die,” said Maka. “You did though.”

“Yeah, but like, I had to get cut in half first, so…” Soul shrugged. “We did a lot of stupid shit back then.”

“Yeah, still,” Maka said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand why you didn’t want to be around us anymore then, but I get it now.”

“It’s okay,” Soul said. “Not all the reasons were as good as ‘not wanting to die’.”

Maka looked away, blushing. 

“I better get the - “

“The sword, yeah.”

Maka rolled onto her stomach on the floor, rummaging under the bed. There was a lot of junk under there, and she dragged out a couple of plastic storage crates.

“Get that out of the way, there’s a lot of junk under here,” Maka said, pushing a box labelled ‘highschool memories’ in his direction. Soul duly hauled it on to her bed and started moving the other plastic crates out of the way. 

“Aha!” Maka returned from the depths of under her bed triumphantly, cobwebby and brandishing something distinctly sword shaped. It was carefully wrapped in some kind of black and yellow fabric, but it was covered in dust.

Maka unwrapped it, carefully, reverently. She had taken the sword out for a very long time, even if she still thought about it. She stroked the cloth gently with her fingers, brushing away the dust as carefully as she could. She laid it out carefully and Soul finally recognised it for what it was.

Hiro’s letterman jacket.

The one he got for playing badminton. 

Maka freed the sword, carefully smoothing the jacket as she folded it and put it to the side. She flicked her wrist outward as she examined the edge with her nail, raising the sword in the familiar way that caught the light.

_ Excalibur. _

* * *

_ They’re in the hospital again. They’re always in the hospital. It’s creepy as shit there, so of course everyone always wants to hang out in the abandoned hospital . Soul hated it.Soul would rather they hung out at the bowling alley, or maybe like, the roller rink.  _

_ Maybe a local diner. _

_ Maybe another one of them could learn to drive so that they could all carpool to the next town over in order to go to the cinema. That’d be nice.  _

_ But no.  _

_ It’s always the creepy hospital. _

_ They’re in the basement this time. The basement that used to be the morgue. _

_ Famously the worst part of any abandoned, creepy hospital. _

_ And Black Star had found a sword in a rock. Soul wasn’t sure how he’d found the sword in the rock, considering that the rock was in a weird cavern… cave thing. At the bottom of a staircase. Behind a secret door. In a storage closet. In the morgue. In the basement. In the abandoned hospital. Down in the valley-oh.  _

_ Black Star had explained, at some point, but Soul hadn’t been listening. He was too busy with the sword in the rock. It didn’t deserve to be called a sword in a stone, it wasn’t upright, it looked more like someone had slashed down at the rock, cleaving it deeply enough that it had gotten stuck and they hadn’t bothered to try pulling it out again.  _

_ It was rusted and weathered, and Soul was pretty sure Black Star was going to break it if he kept trying to get it out. Soul thought that if the sword in the rock didn’t want to come out, everyone needed to just leave it alone. _

_ “I don’t think we should- “ _

_ “Let me try!” _

_ Great.  _

_ Fantastic.  _

_ Fucking Hiro was going to use his dumb badminton muscles to break the old, rusty, piece of shit sword that was in this rock, and Maka was looking at his forearms hopefully - like he was going to have to roll up his - oh my god he was actually rolling up his sleeves. _

_ What a douche.  _

_ Soul couldn’t wait until the sword either broke or Hiro gave up, whichever came first.  _

_ Hiro grabbed the sword and -  _

_ It slid right out, singing a high, pure note. _

_ Motherfucker.  _

_ Underneath the rust, a light pulsed through the sword, growing brighter and brighter, the thick layer of rust flaking away until Soul couldn’t stand to look at it any more, flinching away from the bright, burning light it was exuding. The note was still reverberating around the cavern, bouncing off the walls and ringing true. It was a G.  _

_ The note died, and the light faded suddenly. When Soul looked up again it took his eyes a minute to adjust back to the darkness. His adjusted faster than anyone else’s, and his vision was clearer than the others in the dark anyway. Flash photos were a nightmare though.  _

_ The sword was clean now, the rust gone, and the corroded, eaten blade filled in again, so the edge was straight and true. It looked razor sharp, but Soul wasn’t exactly an expert in swords.  _

_ But even if he wasn’t an expert, he could still read in the dark, and it didn’t take a sword expert to recognised the most famous sword to ever appear in legend., especially when someone so thoughtfully wrote its name along the blade. _

Excalibur.

_ Fucking Hiro.  _

* * *

“Do the others know,” Soul asked quietly, as they climbed into the car.

“That I kept the sword?” Maka frowned. “I never told them about it - maybe? They know I was supposed to bring it back, I think.”

“Yeah, but they’re your best friends,” Soul said. “I think they know you just a little better than to think you got rid of the legendary sword your.. “

Soul didn’t want to say ‘dead boyfriend’ but ‘ex-boyfriend’ didn’t seem any better at this point. 

“Yeah,” Maka said, breezing past the pause in conversation. “They probably figured I still have it somewhere.”

“Well, I mean,” Soul said. “What does a rock need a sword for anyway?”

Maka laughed, and this time, Soul was able to smile as well. 

“Still, do you think they’ll be mad?”

“They might be, but he was your boyfriend,” Soul shrugged. “We can stop and get donuts if you want, ease the blow.”

“Or,” Maka whispered conspiratorially, indicating to pull in. “We could get donuts, then sit in the car and eat them before we go back to the house.”

* * *

_ “My family used to own this whole place, you know,” Soul said. And Soul told the story like it had been told him. “We used to be loaded, way back in the day.” _

_ “Aren’t you still like, pretty - “  _

_ “I know we’re pretty well off now, but it was nothing compared to the crazy rich we used to be. We used to own this whole town, basically. We were crazy landlords, the kind that own the whole town, and are also your boss that doesn’t pay you enough to cover the rent they charge you. We were filthy rich. And it was really dirty money. _

_ “But that was before my dad was born, maybe before my granddad, I’m not a hundred percent on the dates. But my granddad’s dad, my great granddad, made some bad deals. Really bad ones. And he made them with everyone. On earth, and below it. _

_ “He wasn’t a great guy. Most of my family wasn’t great either. Still aren’t. But what he didn’t have in business acumen, he made up for in cowardice.” _

_ “Those are both terrible things to have.” _

_ “Yeah, I already told you he was terrible, I don’t know where you though this story was going to go. So he welched out on all those deals, skipped town. I don’t know what happened to him. My granddad doesn’t know what happened to him. His mom wouldn’t talk about it. She remarried, and everyone just went on… not talking about it.  _

_ “But he left someone who did want to talk abou it up here in the attic, in the circle. And he was waiting for literally anyone to come in here and let him out. And that’s what I did.” _

_ “Where did… whatever it was go?” _

_ “Somewhere else. I don’t know. I didn’t ask. He didn’t say.” _

_ Maka looked at him, but didn’t say anything.  _

* * *

Soul paid for the donuts, more than enough for two people, and they sat in the car, laughing and joking, arguing over the best flavours. 

* * *

_ It’s been almost a year since Soul was here last - but it’s like he never left. Oni was straining inside him, twisting away. Oni couldn’t breach the contract and take control. But he wanted to. _

_ Oni wanted out of this place. _

_ Soul couldn’t blame him for that.  _

_ It didn’t feel like a year, though. Soul moved through his old route through the house silently, out of a habit he’d thought was broken. Through the rooms, avoiding the parts of flooring that were liable to buckle under his weight and guiding Maka carefully through the house until - _

_ They were in the attic. _

_ Soul looked back at Maka. Her mouth was slack, but her eyes were darting around the room, drinking everything in. It all looked so familiar to Soul, the scrawling text, the circle, the crushed cans of soda and dusty candy wrappers - it was just how they’d left it. And they had left it, and that was supposed to be permanent, and Soul wasn’t sure why he was all that interested in staying here anymore. _

_ “Can we go now?” _

_ “What.. is this place?” Maka asked, crouching down to get a better look at the crumpled wrappers. “You eat licorice.” _

_ “So do lots of people,” Sou said, aware that that wasn’t entirely true. _

_ “That’s not true,” Maka said, holding up the wrapper like it was crucial evidence. “You’re literally the only person I know who eats black licorice.” _

_ “I used to come here a lot,” Soul admitted, sitting down. The boards groaned under his feet, but not so much that he was worried about it. “Before you came to town. I stopped about a year ago.” _

_ “Why did you… You didn’t answer my question,” Maka frowned at him, then at the licorice wrappers, brushing them aside like she didn’t want to be too near them. She moved to sit in the space she cleared, too near the edge of the now broken circle for Soul’s comfort.  _

_ “Don’t!” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Don’t sit there, the - “  _ quick! think of something Soul!  _ “ - floor’s not safe there.” _

_ Maka moved, sitting beside him. He didn’t know what would’ve happened if she’d gone inside the circle, but he didn’t want to find out either. It might’ve been nothing. He hoped to God it would’ve been nothing.  _

_ “What happened here, Soul?” _

_ “It was a long time ago.” _

_ “Not that long.” _

_ “A year, a bit more, maybe.” _

_ “Not really that long ago at all,” Maka leaned into him. “You don’t like it here, but you used to come here a lot.” _

_ “Yeah, I guess. How’d you know that?”  _

_ “Just a guess,” Maka said. Then: “I know I wouldn’t want to carry that many cans up those stairs at once.”  _

_ “No, I didn’t either,” Soul looked down at his hands. His fingers were longer than they used to be, but just as flexible. He’d gained about a third in the year, which was changing the way he played. Nobody had really noticed.  _

_ “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” Maka said. “We can just go home.” _

_ “No!” Soul didn’t know where that came from. He didn’t want to tell her what had really happened, but he didn’t want to go home either. Once they hopped over the wall on the other side he would head to his house, and she would head to hers. He didn’t particularly want that. He didn’t want to stay here either, though.  _

_ “So you’ll tell me?” _

_ “Yeah, I guess I’ll tell you.” _

* * *

“Didn’t you ever wonder, Soul, what happened?” Maka asked. “It’s not something me and the others ever really talked about - we were all there, so I guess we didn’t see the point.”

Soul didn’t think it was a good idea to point out that that was a dumb question. Of course he had wondered. He still wondered. How had Hiro died? What had the others seen? What happened to the… Did they kill it? How did they kill it without Hiro? What happened to the sword of legend? He’d just never thought it was… He wasn’t in a position to ask, that was all. 

“On… Prom?” 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Soul admitted. “Sometimes.”

“You could’ve asked.”

“No, I couldn’t,” Soul said. “You didn’t…”

“No, you’re right - I didn’t want to see you.” 

They lapsed into silence. Soul didn’t know much about what happened on stakeout, but he thought that there would be less awkward pauses than this. Less long, slow silences. Soul wished he’d thought to bring more snacks, or any snacks at all. 

He looked out across the street, and drummed his fingers against his thighs. He swallowed, and glanced at Maka once more before speaking again, his eyes fixed on the soft glow of the street lamps.

“Would you tell me, if I asked you now?” 

“I’d tell you,” Maka said. “If you asked.”

Soul looked at Maka, and was surprised when he met her eyes. He felt the question die in his throat before he could think about voicing it. He felt aware of everything - the small space of the car, the heavy weight of the air, pressing all around him, the muffled sounds of the world outside it. 

“What happened,” Soul started, “that night? What happened to Hiro?”

* * *

_ “We should go,” Soul said, lingering in the hallway.  _

_ “It’s fine - Soul, there’s nothing to worry about!” Maka was testing the first step on the stairs and getting ready to charge up the rest of the stairs with her usual characteristic caution.  _

_ You know, none.  _

_ “Wait!” Soul called. “You can’t step there!” _

_ “What?” _

_ “That’s not - it’s not safe, you have to - “  _

_ “Have to what?” _

_ “You have to skip that one. And a couple others.” _

_ “Which ones? This one? Is this one safe to stand on? How about this one?” _

_ “Stop - wait - oh my god, I’ll show you the right way up the stairs,” Soul moved towards the stairs. “You’re giving me heart palpitations.” _

* * *

Maka swallowed, staring out the window. 

“After you, after you got hurt,” Maka said carefully dodging around the specifics, “We just took it as proof that there really was something there, something that we had to stop.”

Soul didn’t say anything, even when Maka looked sidelong at him to gauge his reactions. He thought if he interrupted her, he’d never hear the whole story. 

“So we started going to the hospital more and more, not just on Saturdays, but after school and we would cut school as well sometimes,” Maka said, checking again to see what Soul thought of Maka, notorious nerd, skipping school. 

Well, it wasn’t like he’d been around to notice, between the hospital and trying to put some space between them deliberately. 

“We weren’t getting anywhere, and it was so frustrating,” Maka said. “Hiro, especially - I don’t know how much you remember of the night you got hurt, but Hiro… he didn’t manage to finish it off. He had it cornered, and he was about to… but there wasn’t enough time. You were going to die, and I couldn’t carry you on my own.”

Soul didn’t know this, any of this. 

He’d never really thought about it too much, assuming that Hiro had slain the beast and carried him, bridal style to the real, operating hospital. He’d never asked either, and pretended he didn’t remember anything leading up to his injury, letting the nurses fill him on what Maka and Hiro had said happened. 

“But that’s not… sorry, I got distracted,” Maka shrugged. “But Hiro was determined to get it, but no matter how many times we went back, it never appeared. It was like it was just gone? I thought it had died.. Hoped really. But we wanted to be sure. We wanted to know for sure that it was dead.”

“Hiro was obsessed, though, this had to be the whole reason, he had, you know…”

“Excalibur?”

“Yeah, and I was… I wanted to know, why the sword, why the monster, why the hospital… and then when we did figure it out,” Maka said, sighing. “And it was… Soul it was the end of the world. And we had to stop it.”

“Wait… what? How?” Soul said. “Really?”

“Yeah… it’s kind of… there was a baby, once, and the baby’s mother put the end of the world inside,” Maka said. “It made more sense at the time, but I don’t really remember all the details anymore. But this… baby… “

“Chrona, right?”

“Yeah, how’d you - ?” Maka said. “I guess, it’s pretty obvious, I don’t know why I was trying to hide it from you.”

“Chrona’s mother locked Ragnorok inside of them, and letting him out was going to be the end of the world,” Maka said. “So that’s what she tried to do. And Chrona needed the sword to do it, and for the timing to be just right.”

“So why did you - “

“There was only one to stop Chrona, who was just going to keep hurting people, even if they didn’t start the end of the world,” Maka said, shrugging.

“The sword?”

“Yeah,” Maka looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. “We thought we had it all figured out, we didn’t realise it was all a trap, just to get us to bring the sword to them. Chrona’s mother… we didn’t realise. We thought we had to bring the sword, that we could only stop Chrona on one night, but… She was a liar. She told us all she wanted to do was save her baby, all she wanted to do was see Chrona again, and that this was the way to do it.”

“And she pleaded, begged us to save Chrona, so we tried, but she’d been leading us into a trap the entire time, and we… we were so stupid to fall for it,” Maka’s hands tighthened into fists, balling in the fabric of her skirt. “If we hadn’t been so stupid, Hiro might still be alive.”

Soul reached over the centre console, wrapping his hand around one of Maka’s tight, angry, fists. 

“And it’s not… I know,  _ I know, “  _ Maka insisted, before Soul could interrupt her. “I know that we didn’t know better. Even if we had known it was a trap, and even then… I think we still would have gone. But it’s hard, it’s hard, Soul, to think about that time, and not wonder, if we’d, if I’d done things differently - “

“You know,” Soul said, lightly, almost conversationally. “Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d gone with you, when you asked me to. If I’d been there, would it have -” 

“There wasn’t anything that could’ve made a difference,” Maka said, calmly, assertively. Taking breaths to steady herself. “And even if doing something differently might’ve changed the outcome, I don’t know that for sure. It happened how it happened, and I can’t change that.”

The way she said it, measured and even. This was something Maka had learned to remind herself, whenever the ‘what ifs’ got too much. But it was the kind of thing that was easy to remind someone else to do, and hard to tell yourself. Even harder to make yourself believe it.

“It was Prom, of course,” Maka said, starting to tell the story again, as if nothing had happened. As if Soul’s hand wasn’t still clenched in hers. “You knew that. We all left early to go to the hospital.”

“I knew that too.”

“Yeah, and when we got there, Medusa, you remember Medusa?”

“The school guidance counsellor?”

“Yeah, she was Chrona’s mom,” Maka said. “I mean, she also got me into my top choice college, so…”

“She was very good at her job,” Soul conceded, remembering how she’d managed to make sure he caught up on the work he missed while hospitalized. She was the reason he didn’t have to go to summer school to graduate. Pity, it turned out she was evil. 

“Yeah, the trap was sprung… She killed Hiro,” Maka looked out the windscreen. “Right in front of us, before any of us realised what was wrong… I tried to stop the bleeding… but there was just so much blood, it was everywhere... there was blood all over my hands, my dress. And he was dying, and I didn’t notice… she took the sword.”

Maka’s dress, her prom dress, had been confiscated as evidence. Soul had never learned what had happened to it after that, he doubted she’d ever gotten it back, even if she wanted it back. 

“And Hiro died,” Maka said. “Right in my arms.”

Maka looked down at her arms, cradling them gently, as if to remind herself of how Hiro had looked, fit in the shape of them. Soul squeezed her hand.

“And I had to leave him there,” Maka said. “That was part of the reason it was so suspicious, apparently - the fact that we didn’t bring him straight to the hospital, or to the police or to anyone. We just left him there, because we still had to stop Chrona. That was what he would’ve wanted us to do, I think. That’s what I thought then, anyway. That it didn’t matter, because if the world ended it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“And we went down into the hospital basement, and we fought Chrona,” Maka said. “I don’t… it all happened very fast, and most of us had concussions at the end of it anyway, so we don’t always agree how it happened. But from what I rememberBlack Star annoyed Chrona, and then when it went after him… Someone… I think it was Tsubaki… managed to get Chrona to drop the sword. I think she cut off their whole hand.”

“And then... we were playing keep away, until one of us could get close enough… I stabbed Chrona, you know, right through the heart. They still have a mark there… it’s… it’s not like a scar, it’s a stain, I think. It’s here,” Maka said, pressing her free hand to her chest, and splaying it to cover more ground. “And about this big. It’s black.”

“But it was over really quickly, and I didn’t really notice until after how hurt any of us really were. I have a scar right here,” Make brushed her bangs back out of her face, and Soul could see the thin line of puckered skin. Soul reached up and ran his thumb over it, gently stroking the raised texture. Maka leaned into the contact, shuddering. 

Before flinched backwards, and looking out the window again. 

She tugged her hand free.

“And then the building came down, and we went to the hospital and… everything just kept going.”

* * *

_ “Have you ever gone inside?” _

_ “Inside?” _

_ “Inside the house, you know, instead of just cutting through the gardens?” _

_ “Yeah, I guess, a couple of times,” Soul said. “S’no big deal.” _

_ “You’ve been in there ‘a couple of times’ - “ Maka airquoted “- but you thought it wasn’t safe to go into the hospital?” _

_ “Yeah, well, it’s not,” Soul said. “Maybe I was speaking from experience.” _

_ “Well, you’re fine now.” _

_ “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that going into abandoned buildings is a good idea!” _

_ “What are you so scared of?” _

_ Soul could feel Oni twisting away - he didn’t want to go back inside the house he’d been imprisoned in, but Maka was already on the porch, slipping through the door.  _

_ It was still wedged where Soul had left it.  _

_ “Maka! Don’t! It’s not safe!” Soul ran after her.  _

* * *

It was quiet for a long time after that.

* * *

_ “I thought you’d be gone already,” Maka said, surprised to see Soul waiting for her.  _

_ “I didn’t want you walking home alone. It’s not safe.” _

_ “I can look after myself.” _

_ “Maybe I don’t want to walk home alone, did you ever think about that Maka?” _

_ “Alright, alright, that’s all you had to say,” Maka smiled. “I’ll keep you safe.” _

* * *

Eventually though, Maka pulled out and headed back to the house. 

They had enough donuts left to share with everyone.

* * *

_ It was a narrow hallway, for a hospital.  _

_ Soul didn’t think you’d really be able to get a stretcher, or gurney, or whatever they were called around the corners. There wasn’t even enough room to walk three abreast, so Soul was awkwardly trailing behind the two people who were walking side by side and hearing their entire conversation but not being quite loud enough to be an active participant.  _

_ “You’re kind of idiot, Hiro,” Maka was laughing, in the kind of way that Soul knew would make Hiro play up his idiocy, just to make her laugh more. _

_ Soul couldn’t blame him for that. _

_ She had a nice laugh. _

_ Soul just didn’t really want to hear it right now, so he put his headphones on and cranked the volume all the way up.  _

* * *

“We brought donuts!” Maka announced cheerfully to everyone, who was crowded around the table, trying to discern more information on the second coming of Ragnarok. 

* * *

_ “Soul! Wait up!” Maka fell into step with him. They walked home together most days, cutting through the manor grounds easily.  _

* * *

“We brought the legendary sword of King Arthur!” Soul announced cheerfully to everyone, who was crowded around the table, trying to discern more information on the second coming of Ragnarok. 

* * *

_ “Hey, Soul, wait up!” Maka ran to join him. He took off his headphones to hear her better. “I thought we could walk home together.” _

_ “Don’t you usually go home with Kidd?” Soul asked, because she did normally do that. Was it weird that he knew? Probably, but it was too late to do anything about that now. _

_ “Yeah, but his Dad wanted to spend time with him after school today.” _

_ Being the principal’s kid wasn’t all that. It meant that almost everyone in the school thought that he was a narc. Soul had no way of knowing whether or not Kidd was a narc, because no one would ever trust him enough to tell him anything. Kidd couldn’t snitch if he wanted to.  _

_ “He in trouble or something?” _

_ “No, nothing like that,” Maka paused, like she was thinking about whether or not she should tell him the rest of the story. “It’s his Mom’s anniversary.” _

_ Kidd’s mom had died when they were in elementary school. Home invasion gone wrong.  _

_ They never found out who did it.  _

_ “She was nice,” Soul said, knowing that Maka had never met her. “Our parents used to make us spend a lot of time together when we were kids, and she used to make the best cookies I’ve ever tasted.” _

_ “He didn’t tell me that,” Maka said. “He doesn’t talk about her.” _

_ They were coming up to the old manor - Soul still took the shortcut through it, even though he could feel Oni flinching inside him every time he went anywhere near the place. But this time, he made to go the long way around. _

_ They were having a nice chat, and he didn’t see any point in cutting it short.  _

_ “Don’t you normally cut through here?” _

_ Or they could take the short cut.  _

_ “Yeah, yeah I do,” Soul sighed. “You want a boost?” _

_ He locked his fingers together and launched Maka onto the top of the wall. He averted his eyes politely. Maka liked to wear very short skirts. She straddled the top of the wall easily, reaching down to offer him a hand.  _

_ He took it, and she hauled him up. _

_ They were close.  _

_ Too close.  _

_ “Thanks!” Soul said hurriedly, dropping to the other side quickly.  _

* * *

“Okay,” Kidd said, around a mouthful of donut. ”Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“I’m not hungry,” Soul said.

“Me neither,” said Maka. “You keep going.”

“Okay, I think… that this is a weapon, but I can’t quite nail the translation,” Kidd admitted. “And this means something… Oni knew what was going to happen.”

“What?”

“Soul, I think Oni knew he was going to be destroyed,” Kidd said. “This part is about making provisions for you - closing your account, as it were, so that once he was gone… well… he didn’t want there to be any reversion.”

Kidd moved to another sheaf of paper, flicking through them.

“This isn’t just instructions to save his brother - this is everything he wanted you know,” Kidd said, laying a page out in front of him. “This is a brownie recipe.”

“He used to make it for me sometimes,” Soul said. “When I had a shitty week.”

“Yeah, a lot of it is stuff like that, and going through and translating… He loved you, and he wanted to make sure you were taken care of Soul, and I think… I think he wanted that for his brother too,” Kidd said. 

* * *

_ Soul didn’t like Hiro, but Maka did. _

_ A lot. _

_ And she got annoyed when he didn’t. _

_ “Soul!” she would say, in a sharp voice. “There’s no need to be rude!” _

_ And Soul think, somewhere in the bottom of his heart, the deep and guilty part, that Hiro would shoot him A Look. A smug look, maybe. A nasty look. A superior look.  _

_ But Hiro only ever looked bashful and delighted. A little bit embarrassed, even, of the fuss.  _

_ Soul tried not to talk in front of Hiro, since he couldn’t figure out how to be nice.  _

_ “You’re so sullen lately, it’s like you never talk.” _

_ There was no winning, sometimes.  _

* * *

“This is it,” Kidd said. “It’s got to be this one, how to save Ragnarok.”

Soul and the others waited, watching.

* * *

_ “Why don’t you guys go that way? Soul and I can go this way, and we can all cover more ground,” Maka pointed out. _

_ Soul didn’t like the idea of splitting up, but not enough to disagree with Maka. Besides, this way, he’d get to hang out with her. Alone. He really liked the idea of that.  _

_ Hiro looked like he was having similar, and at the same time, conflicting, reservations. But it didn’t matter, because Maka was already charging down a corridor and gesturing for Soul to follow her. He shrugged back at Hiro, then jogged to catch up. There wasn’t ever much point in arguing with Maka. _

_ Or Black Star. _

_ Soul and the others spent a lot of time hoping that they wouldn’t start arguing.  _

_ It made for a long week. _

_ Whatever way that they were going, it didn’t feel like exploring. Maka was moving deliberately, impatiently waiting for Soul to catch up and waiting for him at turns.  _

_ “It’s around here,” Maka said. “We’re almost there!” _

_ “Where are we going?” Soul asked.  _

_ “You’re going to love it,” Maka shouldered a stubborn door. “It’s so cool - can you help me? This is really stiff.” _

_ Soul squared himself up and shouldered the door, forcing it to open wide enough for him to squeeze through. Maka stepped through the gap, which made Soul even surer that she knew where she was going. _

_ They were in a stairwell, one with a sign that pointed up to ‘roof access’. Maka grabbed Soul’s hand. He flushed, clumsily entangling his fingers with hers.  _

_ “There’s not much further, I promise,” Maka said, leading him up the stairs, pointing out the treacherous places. They stuck close to the wall, where the tight spiral was more secure. _

_ They arrived at a door, and Maka moved to push it open, before stopping. She looked back at Soul, who shrugged.  _

_ “Close your eyes.” _

_ “Huh?” _

_ “Just, close your eyes,” Maka said. “I promise, it’ll be worth it.” _

_ Soul rolled his eyes, for dramatic flair, but did as she asked anyway. He then immediately started to regret it when he had to walk with them closed. Across what the cool air and breeze was telling him was the open roof and the uncomfortable creaking under his weight was telling was a less than ideal roof to be standing on. _

_ “Careful,” Maka said, “Okay, you’re fine. Just through here.” _

_ Soul did not feel fine.  _

_ “Okay, open!” _

_ It didn’t take long for Soul’s eyes to adjust to the light, because there wasn’t much to bein with. What little there was - moonlight, nearby street lighting - was filtered through the murky glass panels, filmed over in algae. There was a heavy, damp feeling in the air, and an unseasonable warmth. The plants, once meticulously cared for by patients in recovery and staff alike, had grown feral and dense, cannibalising their fellows. The strong scent of mint hung in the air, letting Soul know who was at the top of this particular food chain.  _

_ Looking around, he could see that the greenhouse was the shape of a huge glass dome, sitting undistributed on the top of the old hospital.  _

_ And right in the centre… _

_ “Who puts a piano in a greenhouse?” Soul said. “The humidity - that’s just cruel.” _

_ “I thought you would like it?” _

_ “Did you do this?” _

_ “Yes, Soul I single-handled moved a piano up five flights of stairs into a greenhouse - no, I found it here,” Maka answered. “I just thought you’d think it was cool.” _

_ “Like, visually, this is stunning and I am thrilled to be here… but that poor piano… I bet it doesn’t even - “ _

_ “It plays.” _

_ “What.” _

_ “Some of the keys are a little sticky, but it plays - “ _

_ “How the fuck does it - “ _

_ Soul drifted towards the piano. _

_ It had been beautiful once, he could tell.  _

_ He trailed his fingers across the notes, rolling up and down an octave. His hand stumbled on the return journey, where one of the keys hadn’t sprung back up to meet him. _

_ It… certainly made a noise.  _

_ It was not the noise he expected it to make. _

_ It was horribly, atriousily out of tune, some of the keys thunking soundlessly, resounding a completely different sound. _

_ “Yeah, I can’t - “ _

_ “Can you play it?” Maka asked. _

_ “Yeah, definitely,” Soul said. “No problem at all, have a seat.” _

* * *

“Just as he was locked in place, so can the seal be broken…” Kidd murmured.

Kidd scanned over the page, then scanned over it again, then looked up.

“It’s the sword!” Kidd shouted. “I’ve checked it twice, it’s definitely the sword - you guys need to get it out of here before - “

“I thought you guys would like to know that dinner is ready!” Chrona said, arriving down the stairs. They noticed the sword. “What’s that?”

“Don’t!”

Chrona’s hand closed around the sword. 

* * *

_ “We’re going to the hospital again this weekend,” Maka said. They were always going to the hospital. Soul didn’t understand it - they always came back complaining of aches and bruises they’d gotten. They kept pushing deeper into it, searching for something. _

_ It was fun, they said. _

_ Something just kept drawing them back.  _

_ “You guys are always talking about that place,” Hiro said. He was always sitting here lately, smiling mildly at the antics of the others, but with enough sense not to join in. Soul wish he’d either come all the way in, or stay out. There was only room for one lunch time acquaintance at this table, and it was Soul. “I’m not sure it’s safe.” _

_ Soul didn’t like agreeing with Hiro, but not enough to completely disagree with him on this. The hospital wasn’t safe - half of it was in complete disrepair, and the rest was under construction that was forever stopping and starting as the companies who took on the project repeatedly fell through or went bankrupt.  _

_ “It’s not.” _

_ “Oh, hey Soul,” Hiro said, blandly. “Didn’t know you were listening.” _

_ Soul scowled at him, and turned back to his lunch. _

_ “Soul’s always listening,” Maka said. “He’s just quiet.” _

_ Soul didn’t think Maka knew that. He worried his napkin between his fingers, shredding it methodically.  _

_ “Huh,” Hiro said. “Anyway, about the hospital. I don’t think you should go there.” _

_ Maka rolled her eyes, and turned back to making plans with the others, who were all on board to go explore the hospital again this weekend.  _

_ “If you have to go, I think I’d rather if you went with me - “ _

_ The others looked up and immediately started protesting - they were perfectly capable of looking after each other and they didn’t need some loser badminton player to babysit, how would he -  _

_ “Yeah, sure you can come,” Maka said, softening. She waved away the complaints of the others. And by the others, Soul meant mostly Black Star. “The more the merrier.” _

_ “I’m coming too,” Soul said, before he could stop himself, promising to consult his calendar later to see whether or not he could actually go.  _

_ Maka blinked in confusion. She’d asked Soul to come with her a lot of times before. He’d never agreed to before, and she’d eventually stopped asking.  _

_ “Sure, Soul.” _

_ She grinned at him, and he felt his face get warm before cranking his music up loud enough that the others could hear it pouring from his headphones.  _

* * *

Something in the sword reached up to meet Chrona, thick and viscous and the same tarry familiar black Soul associated with the writing scrawled on his bathroom walls. It twined around them, flowing into the gaps between their fingers and sinking underneath their skin.

“Chrona!” Maka cried, stepping closer. “Chrona!”

Chrona arm moved, disjointed and quickly, wrapping their long, grotesque fingers around her throat and squeezing.

Soul was frozen.

Chrona threw back their head and howled as the darkness overcame them.

* * *

_ “Hero, that’s a strange name…” _

_ “It’s spelt with an ‘i’.” He smiled. Hiro didn’t usually sit over here, he usually sat with the other badminton players. The school had a pretty hardcore badminton team, for some reason.  _

_ Soul used to enjoy the no one who sat at his table, content to be left alone. He was barely on the verge of tolerating Maka and all the friends she’d somehow amassed since moving here. This guy, though. He was especially annoying.  _

_ Soul remembered him, from before, even if Hiro didn’t remember Soul.  _

_ He was pretty.  _

_ He had a soft mop of hair that flopped into his eyes, he pushed his hands through it often, pushing it back out of his face for only a moment before it flopped into his eyes again. They were blue, and they twinkled. His teeth were straight, and even, and gleamed when he smiled. He smiled often, like it didn’t take much to please him.  _

_ Soul wasn’t like that. Soul looked tired all the time, and hair was thick and unruly. Some people went prematurely grey. Soul was born premature and grey. It had only gotten whiter with time. His eyes were a burgundy red colour that let too much of the wrong kinds of light into his eyes, so he was always wearing weird sunglasses to counteract the white glare of every pale surface he encountered. _

_ His smile was more canines than not, a concession to the deal.  _

_ Maka blushed when Hiro told her she had a pretty name, and Soul turned back on his walkman.  _

* * *

Chrona, now hauntingly familiar, darted at them, slashing at Soul aggressive, shrieking and howling.

This wasn’t like before. 

They were angry, furious, and heartbroken and willing to rip everyone her to shreds without any preamble. There was no games this time. 

No taunting.

No teasing.

No slow drawn out deaths.

Ragnorok wanted everything to end as soon as possible.

Tsubaki darted in, drawing her sword, and moving to strike - she hit the wall, hard, crumpling. Black Star, moving in on the other side was distracted and - 

Two of them down. 

* * *

_ “How’d it go?” Soul asked, quietly.  _

_ “How’d what go?” Maka asked, back. She down looked at her book, and kept working. “We didn’t have any homework this weekend.” _

_ “You know I was asking about the hospital.” _

_ “Yeah, but I thought you weren’t interested,” Maka underlined something in a green pen. That normally meant she had a question about it, one that she was going to look up the answer to later. He leaned in to see what she’d underlined.  _

Staccato.

_ “It means - “ _

_ “I know what it means, in context,” Maka said. “I want to know… why.” _

_ “Why?” _

_ “Why it means like… fast.” _

_ “It doesn’t exactly mean fast - it’s sort of - “ Soul fumbled around for a word, a definition. Whatever he’d been told when he’d first learned the notation. “Give me your arm.” _

_ “What?” Maka said, but she was already extending it, palm side up. _

_ Soul hummed the notes as he played, his fingers bouncing off the taunt skin of her forearm. _

* * *

“You hurt me!” They shrieked. “You killed my brother!”

“Patti get behind me!“ Liz yelled, thumbing her revolver. 

She’d forgotten her gun.

Patti didn’t have - 

Ragnorok roared, and the wall of sound radiated in a shockwave, knocking the sisters off their feet and…

Two more down.

* * *

_ Soul didn’t have a lot of friends. _

_ He didn’t put a lot of effort into having friends. But he put a lot of effort into seeming cool and unapproachable and like a disaffected youth, so it was surprising that he had them. _

_ Well, he had some people he sat in the vicinity of while he ignored them. _

_ He wasn’t ignoring them today. His headphones were on, but the batteries in his Walkman were flat, so he was eavesdropping. He should carry some around, but there was about a thousand things he should do, and about fifteen things he did do. He liked leaving his headphones on as much as possible. _

_ It made people less likely to talk to him, but more likely to assume he wasn’t listening. _

_ The other half of Soul’s lunch table was loud, so he could almost hear what they were saying, whether or not he was playing music. _

_ Death City was a weird town, and a lot of weird stuff happened there. Most people ignored it – it was for the best. These things usually resolved themselves, or didn’t. The cost of living was cheap here, though, so no one left. _

_ The people at the other end of Soul’s lunch table didn’t subscribe to the belief that these things were best left alone, and were having a loud discussion about the causes of the latest weirdness. They were planning to go into the hospital construction site to investigate. It was a terrible idea, full stop, but they weren’t debating that at all. _

_ They were trying to find out the easiest way in. _

_ One of them, the girl in Soul’s English class, caught him watching. Her name was Maka, and she was always reading ahead of the assigned texts and getting bored in class because she was too far ahead. She kept her hair in pigtails, which was a weird choice for a high-school senior. She smiled. _

_ Soul knocked back one of his headphones like they were actually preventing him from hearing everything. _

_ “What?” _

_ “Do you want to come?” _

_ “Where?” The hospital construction site. _

_ “We’re going to the hospital construction site tonight, you wanna come?” _

_ Unlike these people, Soul didn’t have a death wish. _

_ “Nah.” _

_ He knocked his headphone back over his ear, and went back to pretending he wasn’t listening. _

_ Her face fell, but he could almost pretend he didn’t see it. _

* * *

Kidd looked over his shoulder at the two sisters, then back to Chrona’s rampage. He tried to reach under his jacket, to grab something, focusing - Soul could see an aura building around him, pale light crackling with energy.

Ragnarok roared again, echoing in Chrona’s high, shrill scream.

* * *

_ “Do you mind if we sit here?” _

_ They asked that every day, never presuming that he would be okay no matter how many times they asked. Soul nodded, and moved his bag from the seat beside him to the floor. There was a lot of them, but there wasn’t enough cafeteria for Soul to have the table to himself. He’d take the fifteen minutes of solitude and the fact that they didn’t try to engage him in conversation once they did arrive. _

_ He turned back to his homework – it was due next class, but he figured that if he managed to answer every other question and just wrote down some bullshit for the others, it would seem like he’d put in enough effort to impress. He got away with that a lot, because teachers didn’t really expect all that much of him. _

_ The try-hard punk aesthetic was paying off in how little he had to try with everything else. _

_ A book thudded open in front of him. _

_ “Here,” Maka said. She was in his English class, the class he was doing homework for. “Just copy mine. She’ll never know.” _

* * *

And then there was one.

Soul raised hi foot to a step forward, determined to do something, to get to the sword, get to Maka, get - 

Ragnorok screamed. 

And Soul slammed into the back wall before his foot touched the ground as Ragnarok unfurled, blooming like a flower, ribbons of light pouring off them like waves.

* * *

_ Soul usually sat on his own in most classes. At the front so he could see, but over to the side so he didn’t seem like a complete nerd. He didn’t mind his own company, preferring instead to sit down and struggle with his dyslexia glasses alone. They were literally tinted in the shade ‘rose’ and had the potential to be extremely damaging to his reputation. He used to have orange ones, which wasn’t so bad.  _

_ There were some classes it didn’t matter so much - ones without much reading, or more practical classes - but English wasn’t one of those classes.  _

_ Unfortunately for Soul, someone sat down beside him. _

_ “Hi,” she whispered. “I’m Maka, I’m new.” _

_ If Soul was more tuned into the highschool, he probably would’ve known this already. He didn’t exactly have his ear to the ground. _

_ “I’m Soul,” He grinned back before he could help himself, and she didn’t even flinch at the sight of his teeth.  _

_ “I like your glasses.” _

_ Class started before Soul could say something stupid about them being for his dyslexia, and Maka turned with rapt attention to the teacher. Oh, he realised. She wasn’t sitting at the front and over to the side. She was sitting at the front towards the middle.  _

_ Like a real nerd.  _

* * *

And then there was none.

* * *

_ It was an easy routine to settle into, the third Saturday. _

_ It wasn’t going to happen all at once. Change would be slow, and there was only so far Oni could take him, but that wasn’t the important part.  _

_ What was important was that people would just know, and not realise they had ever not known.  _

* * *

Hiro.

Oni.

* * *

_ “Alright, I’ll do it,” Soul said.  _

_ “I thought you would,” the demon said. “It’s a pretty sweet deal.” _

_ “I’m sorry I left you in here for so long,” Soul said. _

_ “That’s not your fault,” the demon took a large bite of his sandwich. “You couldn’t have let me out anyway - you don’t know my name. You’ll need to invoke it, though, for the deal.” _

_ “And no one’s going to remember?” _

_ “Nope.” The demon popped the ‘P’, which didn’t look entirely possible given his facial structure. “Well, no one who matters - anyone who does remember won’t be anyone who knows you enough to recognise you, anyway. Kids from camp, that sort of thing.” _

_ “What do I have to do?” _

_ “Just, say my name.” The demon paused for a second, then rapidly remembered that he had never told Soul his name, “It’s Oni.” _

_ “Oni.”  _

* * *

Tsubaki.

Black Star.

* * *

_ “So if I’m not going to hell, what’s in it for you?” _

_ “Depends on the deal,” the demon said. He was eating Soul’s lunch again. Well, he thought he was. Soul made a second sandwich.  _

_ “What do you want?”  _

_ “A body,” the demon said. “Everything’s better when you’re properly corporeal.” _

_ “But… I need my body.” _

_ “Not all the time - surely you could spare, say, a day a month?”  _

_ “Can I pick the day?” _

_ “Does it really matter that much?” _

_ “Well, I don’t want it to be a school day - does it have to be the same day?” _

_ “Why don’t you want it to be the same day?” _

_ “Well, it could be mostly the same day, but like… what if I had something I had to go to, like, I don’t know, a funeral?” _

_ “We could work that out.” _

* * *

Liz.

Patti.

* * *

_ “And you’re sure I won’t go to hell?” _

_ “Kid, I can’t promise anything like that,” the demon said, bored and restless, trapped in a circle someone else had drawn. “But I’ll tell you this much for free; this deal won’t be what swings the vote.” _

_ “Why not?” _

_ “Here’s the thing with deals - you can’t actually sell your soul.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “That’s a rumour. A soul is non-transferable property,” The demon seemed to be struggling with the peanut butter cup wrapper. “What you can do is ask us to do something that you wouldn’t otherwise do, and go to hell for that. But it’s in Hell’s best interest to give you that opportunity.” _

_ “So you don’t go to hell for making a deal with the devil - “ _

_ “Just for the contents of the deal.” _

_ “So like… if I wanted you to kill someone?” _

_ “Depends.” _

_ “On?” _

_ “Did they do anything to you, or someone you love?” _

_ “No.” Soul reached over the line and grabbed the peanut butter cup, ignoring the demon’s brief protest in order to peel off the paper wrapper. “Sorry, I just couldn’t watch you. But yeah, what if I wanted you to kill someone just because I thought they were annoying?” _

_ “Then you go to hell.” _

_ “Is this - ?” _

_ “No, kid, being transgender isn’t a punishable offence.” _

* * *

Kidd.

* * *

_ “Are you really a demon?” _

_ “I’m usually disinclined to share, but I don’t have a lot else going on right now, so spilling a few insider secrets seems like small potatoes,” the demon said, then, as if remembering his nature suddenly: “I’ll tell you if you do something for me first.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Can I have your lunch?” _

_ Soul nudged his lunchbox over the line. It was spray painted onto the concrete, so it didn’t smudge. The lunch box was kind of old and has the teenage mutant ninja turtles on it, and he probably should be embarrassed by it, but he’s not embarrassed enough to go buy a new one. It held his lunch, that’s all he needed it to do. _

_ The demon sat on the floor, and pulled the teenage mutant ninja turtle lunch box closer.  _

_ “Yeah, I’m a demon.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Yeah, heaven, hell, the whole shebang - is this turkey?” _

_ “Turkey on rye, yeah,” Soul said. _

_ “And you didn’t eat this?” _

_ “Wasn’t hungry.” _

_ “You’re a teenage boy.” _

_ Soul didn’t answer, but he leaned over and grabbed the other half of the sandwich, biting into it vindictively. _

* * *

Maka.

* * *

_ “What do you need?” _

* * *

He needed to get up.

Soul ached, his bones felt like lead. He wanted to stay here.

Every part of him hurt so much, he wanted to lie there and let the world fall in around him.

He braced himself against the floor, and the effort it took to push himself upright was monumental. 

Then he heard a voice.

Faint.

Hard to discern. 

Chrona.

* * *

_ The attic.  _

_ That was where the servants must have lived, back when this was a house that had a family that had servants. _

_ The furniture, what little of it there was, was crushed against the walls, leaving a wide circle space around the centre of the room. The walls and floors were covered in strange shapes, but it was dark, and the age and quality of them meant that Soul couldn’t tell if they were supposed to be letters or not. _

_ When he saw what was in the centre of the room, the eye of the vortex of shapes and sigils, he suspected they weren’t letters he recognised. _

_ In the centre of the room, wain and wasting, a red demon sat on the floor. _

_ “Help me.”  _

* * *

“Help me.”

* * *

_ The voice was thin, and wavered through the house, seeming far away, and far above Soul. _

_ “Help me.” _

_ Soul eyed the staircase, weighing up his cowardice against the load the steps could take. He put his weight nervously one the first step which groaned in protest.The wood bowed a little, but the voice came again before Soul could question himself. _

_ “Please.” _

_ Soul took another step, and the second step creaked.  _

_ The steps cried the whole way up, but Soul kept going anyway.  _

* * *

“Please.”

* * *

_ It was damp, and musty, and the mouldering carpet under his feet squelched, feeling a little like walking on a particularly springy moss. It wasn’t dark out, but something about the inside of the house made it feel like nighttime.  _

_ The light couldn’t seem to get in despite all the broken windows.  _

_ There wasn’t any furniture, and the staircase swooped away up to higher stories with more worrisome floors. The staircase looked brittle, and as brave as Soul was feeling, he wasn’t feeling that brave.  _

_ He was just about reaching the limits of his courage, turning to go when he heard it. _

_ “Help me.” _

* * *

“Help me.”

* * *

_ It was raining, the sort of, but not enough that he really wanted to go onto the porch to wait it out. He couldn’t really say why he did it, not really. He just wasn’t filled with mortal dread at the idea of it, not today.  _

_ He didn’t want to do it. _

_ But he didn’t not want to do it either.  _

_ Soul had never been this close to the house before - up close it was even uglier, the weathered facade wearing down to reveal festering wood and an unpleasantness that seemed to be built right into the foundations. The door was open, swollen to the point it had burst out of the frame, permanently ajar. Even still, when Soul touched it, it was stiff.  _

_ It scraped along the warped and rotten boards of the porch, scratching a slow arc across them, evidence of what he’d done. It wedged just about a third of the ways open on a particularly high board, and wouldn’t be moved again, either fully open or closed. Soul was slender - he always had been - he was a picky eater at the best of times, and family dinners had a tendency to sour his appetite.  _

_ He slipped through the gap easily. His backpack was harder, but he wriggled it in. He didn’t want to leave it outside.  _

_ And then, he was inside. _

* * *

Soul wavered, humming against the light as he pushed his way to the centre of it. 

He listened for the pitch, harmonized, and returned it.

The light burned against his skin, but he was able to keep it at bay.

Chrona was never more than a vessel to their mother, but Soul, Soul knew more than anything what it was to carry something in you, to miss the absence of it with your whole self, and to accept a dark, twisted thing as part of yourself, and eventually to see that help you be the person you are. 

But Chrona wasn’t like Soul. 

Chrona had never chosen to hold Ragnarok close, to embrace him as part of themself. Chrona had never invited Ragnorok into their life. But did they want to, to be able to hold him without it hurting, to have a close part of themself back. 

Soul kept walking, stumbling against the waves of sound as he sang back.

Howling, anguish waved over him, Ragnorok’s song still ringing. 

Soul understood, he still felt the pain of losing Oni acutely. 

Soul was never going to feel Oni, twisting and frightened again.

Soul was never going to wake up on a third Sunday with a message letting him know that Oni had baked brownies yesterday.

Soul could understand. 

Maka was on the floor, gasping for air, her hands clamped over her ears to try block out the sound reverberating through her. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Soul reached out for her, wrapping and arm around her waist and hauling her up.

She looked at him, and despite everything, she smiled. 

Then they both looked up, at the eye of the storm of light and sound.

Soul pushed through, once more.

And everything was still.

Maka let her hands drop, but she didn’t move away from Soul. 

Chrona was suspended in mid-air, Excalibur dangling loosely from their fingertips. Tears were running down their cheeks, quiet, almost silent sobbing lost in the waves of Ragnarok's grief. 

“I’m going to miss him too,” Soul said. 

Chrona spun on Soul, raising the _ Excalibur _ high… before dropping it.

It shattered against the hard concrete floor of the basement.

“Losing someone… it’s never easy,” Maka said. “But… when you have friends… it’s gets easier to move on. Live life without them.”

Ragnorok let out one final shriek of anguish, before Chrona dropped.

Soul and Maka rushed to catch them. 

* * *

_ Soul recognized a bad idea when he saw one, but that didn’t always mean he wasn’t going to do it. He didn’t want to go home quite yet, and cutting through the yard of the actual abandoned mansion in town seemed like the kind of thing cool and rebellious kids should do.  _

_ And Soul wanted so badly to be a cool and rebellious kid.  _

_ There was a lot of old rumours about the place, and why it was empty. The rumors mostly involved murder, and ghosts, and a lot of other things. Soul knew it had belonged to his family a long time ago. It didn’t anymore.  _

_ When he’d asked his dad about it, he’d been deliberately evasive, and told Soul that a great grandfather had lost in a bad deal. To who, he never said. It was for the best, his mother had said, knowing that if she had tracked the heirs right it would probably have been their house. _

_ Those old houses are so hard to manage, and much too large. _

_ Soul usually skirted about the edges of the grounds, which made the shortcut kind of a moot point, but presumably people saw him hop over the walls with a practised nonchalance. Well, it was less of a hop and more of a climb involving a significant amount of ivy.  _

_ The grounds were overgrown, and thick with weeds. There was the remains of a gravel drive, mostly lost in the plants pushing up through it, but the ground still crunched beneath his feet there. And looming over the whole thing, was the house.  _

_ It was huge and ugly, but Soul couldn’t always tell if that was because of the original design or nature’s attempts to reclaim it. It was covered in the graffiti of cooler, more rebellious kids than him. All of the windows were already broken, but when Soul was feeling especially brave, he liked to try and see if he could knock the remaining shards into the house. _

_ Normally though, he didn’t go anywhere near it. _

* * *

They sat in the wreckage of Kidd’s house and talked about the people they’d lost until the sun crept over the horizon. 

* * *


End file.
